Covid-19: An Opportunity to Restructure the Indian Legal System

The COVID-19 pandemic has, over the course of its 3 years, resulted in a significant loss of human life and continues to pose an incomparable challenge to day-to-day activities. The Indian Legal System, even before it entered the pandemic, was in severe ill health and enduring co-morbidities. With an unparalleled burden of judicial pendency, infrastructural shortcomings, scarce representation, etc., the condition of the Indian legal system was expected to severely deteriorate due to the pandemic and its corresponding implications. As the Covid crisis ploughed on, ravishing economies and reshaping livelihoods, the legal landscape too underwent harsh disturbances. With the pandemic-induced lockdown put in place, legal services in India and around the world found themselves shoved into an intimidating and novel online medium. Paradoxically, as horrifying and painful as the pandemic has been to a majority of the legal institution, it was seen that a part of these changes emerged for the betterment of the legal system and all those that it served to help. This paper aims to critically analyse the positive impacts the Covid-19 pandemic has on the Indian legal landscape, with particular emphasis on the problems facing the Indian legal system now and how the pandemic may bring about a change for the better.