Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, on Tuesday called on the judiciary to move back toward in-person hearings with greater regularity, arguing that the continued reliance on virtual proceedings has affected mentorship, professional development, and camaraderie within the legal profession.
Nandlall made the appeal while speaking at the Opening of the Law Year 2026, during a Special Sitting of the Full Bench of the Supreme Court of Judicature.
“Madam Chancellor, I’m hoping that I can persuade the judiciary to resort to in-person hearings with greater regularity,” the Attorney General said. While acknowledging the usefulness of virtual proceedings, he stressed that their role should be limited. “I do not underestimate the value of Zoom hearings. They have great utilitarian value in relation to certain applications. But trials, submissions, presentation of oral arguments I believe should be done in person.”
Nandlall noted that the circumstances which necessitated a heavy dependence on virtual hearings no longer exist. “COVID has gone seven years now. And I believe the time is opportune to resort,” he said, adding that his call was not for a “mechanical return,” but for a restoration of key elements of legal practice that are best experienced in physical courtrooms.
Drawing on his own experience, the Attorney General reflected on the benefits of in-person advocacy and observation. “Those of us who had the opportunity or rather the privilege of practicing during the period where you had in-person hearings know of the value that we derived from seeing senior practitioners perform their craft in court,” he said. “The amount of knowledge that I gathered on the corridors of the court alone can equal my learning of law in the law school.”
According to Nandlall, that informal but critical learning environment has been lost, with consequences now evident among newer members of the Bar. “We have lost that. And it is being reflected in the conduct of this new generation of lawyers. And you can’t blame them because they have not seen anything better,” he said. “They never saw the great senior counsel of the past from whom we benefited.”
He also warned that reduced face-to-face interaction has weakened professional bonds within the legal community. “That camaraderie that I believe is so necessary for the legal profession is affected negatively because of the non-person engagement,” Nandlall told the gathering, pointing out that “half of the lawyers here who graduated over the last five years are unknown to lawyers who graduated before.”
“I don’t think we have had that degree of unfamiliarity at any stage of the legal profession before,” he added, noting that while the Bar has grown in size, “these things, little things, they have an impact.”
The Attorney General expressed hope that a renewed emphasis on in-person hearings would help restore those professional traditions. “I’m hoping that with the simple return of in-person hearings and these important aspects of the conduct of cases, we can restore that aspect,” he said.
