Welcome to the latest in our ‘Holding Court’ series where the Lit Daily is exploring the variety of ways the pandemic has changed how the nation’s trial courts conduct their business and the things individual jurists are doing to adjust to whatever the new normal is going to be.

Meet Judge Pamela Gates, the civil presiding judge in the Superior Court in Maricopa County, Arizona, the home county of Phoenix. Gates, who was a partner at the firm then known as Bryan Cave before taking the bench in 2009, has overseen a series of mock proceedings to gauge how jurors and trial participants are affected by technological and physical changes to trial proceedings.