While the tra­di­tion­al cer­e­mo­ny to ad­mit new at­tor­neys to prac­tice is usu­al­ly held at the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall in the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, new arrange­ments had to be put in place due to lim­it­ed ac­cess to cour­t­hous­es dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The new at­tor­neys, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the vir­tu­al ad­mis­sion hear­ings last Wednes­day, Thurs­day and Fri­day were split in­to three groups.

Much like the tra­di­tion­al cer­e­mo­ny, two High Court Judges were as­signed to each hear­ing and used speech­es to pro­vide wis­dom and guid­ance to the new at­tor­neys.

But un­like the tra­di­tion­al cer­e­mo­ny, each pe­ti­tion­er was re­quired to say the oath in­di­vid­u­al­ly as op­posed to col­lec­tive­ly.

The at­tor­neys were then giv­en ap­point­ments to vis­it the Hall of Jus­tice, this week, to sign the Oath Book and col­lect their Cer­tifi­cates of En­rol­ment.

“All sani­ti­sa­tion and oth­er pro­to­cols in­clud­ing the wear­ing of masks and the re­quired so­cial dis­tanc­ing were in place at the lat­ter event,” the Ju­di­cia­ry said, in a re­sponse to ques­tions posed by this news­pa­per.

Con­tact­ed ear­li­er this week, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, who pre­sent­ed the pe­ti­tions of four new at­tor­neys said he was pleased with the process.

Scot­land said de­spite the lim­i­ta­tions due to the pan­dem­ic, his team still man­aged to cel­e­brate the oc­ca­sion with their fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends and new col­leagues.

“I find that the use of tech­nol­o­gy in these try­ing times has been re­ward­ing,” Scot­land said, as he praised the in­creased use of sim­i­lar vir­tu­al hear­ings for most cas­es in­clud­ing some tri­als since the start of the pan­dem­ic.

In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sade Mc­Queen-Bernard, who was one of the at­tor­neys pre­sent­ed by Scot­land, said that she and her friends were re­lieved to com­plete the process, which had been put on hold since April.

“To be hon­est we have been look­ing for­ward to this for so long that when we heard it would be vir­tu­al we said we would take it,” Mc­Queen-Bernard said.

She ex­plained that she was hap­py with the two-fold process as she was able to in­vite dif­fer­ent rel­a­tives for each to share the ex­pe­ri­ence with her.

Mc­Queen-Bernard al­so said that she and her friends were able to take tra­di­tion­al pho­tographs in their robes on the steps of the Hall of Jus­tice, with the Ju­di­cia­ry even pro­vid­ing a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

“They (the Ju­di­cia­ry) did the best they could in the cir­cum­stances,” she said.