Attorney General Anil Nandlall, SC, has strongly advocated for a greater return to in-person court hearings, especially for trials and oral arguments.

He was at the time speaking at the opening of Law Year 2026 on Tuesday.

The Attorney General emphasised that physical courtrooms offer invaluable learning opportunities for young attorneys, as they can observe and learn directly from senior practitioners in action.

“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,” he explained.

Guyana began implementing virtual court hearings during the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020 and after the return to normalcy, virtual hearings were retained on a reduced scale.

AG Nandlall argued that young lawyers may be missing out on the essential mentorship that occurs in physical courtrooms.

“The amount of knowledge that I gathered on the corridors of the court alone can equal my learning of law in the law school. And we have lost that,” he lamented.

It is against this backdrop that he also advocated for the implementation of a graduated induction system to further support junior lawyers.

He reasoned that the current system of allowing law school graduates to take on full responsibilities immediately is “unreasonable” and “an injustice” to the profession.

“We need a system that will allow a staged induction into the profession. It is unreasonable to expect a lawyer just emerging out of law school being shouldered with that magnitude of responsibility from the first day that he does these roles. It’s impossible,” he said.