Retired federal Judge Vaughn Walker suspects that the alternative dispute resolution industry won’t snap back to the way things were before the COVID-19 pandemic forced many lawyers and neutrals to work from home.

The former chief judge of the Northern District of California now works as an arbitrator and mediator for FedArb in San Francisco. As the coronavirus contagion worsened in the United States, Walker saw a number of scheduled mediations drop off his calendar. But in the last week or so, he’s seen more interest in online mediation, and said parties in at least one of his cases seem interested in moving forward via video conferencing platform Zoom.