Just over a year ago, if you would have asked an experienced judge or lawyer to imagine the litigation and jury trial backlog if a global pandemic were to sweep through the nation, they first would have probably told you that your morbid scenario wasn't funny and that the courts would never be able to dig out.

This is precisely where we find ourselves today. Throughout state and federal courts, for both civil and criminal cases, we are in an infinitely worse position than we were when the pandemic began. The threshold issue today is how we dig ourselves out before the system implodes.