(Reuters) - They were the road warriors. The Premier 1K Diamond Medallion Executive Platinum MVP Gold million milers.

For years, even decades, many first-chair litigators lived their lives out of suitcases, spending more time traveling for trials or preliminary hearings or depositions than at home.

Until March.

Suddenly grounded, these elite lawyers have seen their routines upended as they adjust to litigating from home. And they're wondering how permanent the changes to the way they practice law will be.

"I do feel like I'm a small bird who has had my wings clipped and put in a cage," said Lori Cohen, who co-chairs Greenberg Traurig's global litigation practice and has tried dozens of big-ticket product liability cases around the country. "I'm not able to soar or fly like I normally do."

As a species, lawyers in my experience are not known for rushing to embrace change. It's not for nothing that stare decisis is a sacred legal principle.

But as the pandemic rages on, nonstop travel is looking more like a holdover from the days when faxing was cutting-edge technology.

"When the dust settles, the secret is that if you've invested in technology, people can function remotely quite well," said Sullivan & Cromwell partner Robert Giuffra Jr.

Before COVID-19, Giuffra — who lives in New York and is lead counsel for VW in the ongoing diesel emissions litigation in San Francisco — estimated that he traveled about 150,000 miles a year. "I'd go to California for a day, Europe for a day-and-a-half, all the time," he said. "I haven't been on a plane since the middle of March, and it's a nice feeling."

It's not that in-person meetings aren't valuable — the insights you get from reading a room, the tidbit gleaned from an elevator conversation, the subtle body language a web camera misses. And I have yet to meet a litigator who thinks an online jury trial could ever be preferable to the real thing.

But what about, say, a third-party deposition? Or a routine status conference, assuming the judge is willing to allow a remote appearance?

"Clients are learning you don't always have to travel," said Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner Michael Lyle, who co-manages the firm's Washington, D.C., office and heads the product liability and mass torts practice there.

Less travel means "less wear and tear on the lawyers," Lyle said. "I don't care how nice the hotel is, I don't sleep as well in a strange place."

There are shared efficiencies as well, he notes. Clients aren't saddled with airfare and hotel bills, and lawyers don't waste unbillable time driving to the airport, waiting in security lines and milling around the gate.

"I think we're becoming smarter about what does and doesn't need travel," said Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis partner Hariklia Karis, who as lead trial counsel for BP in the litigation stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill said she spent the better part of five years constantly on the road.

Until the pandemic, Karis was out of the office three to five days each week. Her 15-year-old daughter recently told her, "I've seen you more in the past three months than the past three years."

When things open back up — after a vaccine is developed or the virus is successfully contained — Karis doesn't anticipate resuming her old travel schedule, though she has already made three short business trips. "There will be changes, that much I don't doubt for a second," she said.

Likewise, Jones Day labor and employment partner Michael Gray, who of late has been enjoying summer dinners with his family outside on their deck in Deerfield, Illinois, said he recently asked his wife, "Why didn't we do this more often?"

Because he wasn't home for dinner, she reminded him.

Since the shutdown, he's handled multiple hearings and depositions remotely that previously would have entailed travel. He also picked up a new client in southern Florida. "Pre-COVID, I probably would have flown down there and introduced myself," Gray said. Instead, they've established a comfortable rapport via Zoom.

Gray said he's become a "big fan" of video calls, appreciating how they can add an element of informality to otherwise contentious interactions with opposing counsel. He actually finds the calls more personal, he said. "If a kid walks in or a dog barks, that's life."

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius chairwoman Jami McKeon, who spent about 80% of her time on the road before the pandemic, agrees that video calls can build connections. "You're meeting with and talking to people in their home environment," she said. "When everyone is the same size in a box on a screen, it's a sort of equalizer. No one is standing in front of a room or in a bigger office."

Still, she added, "There's a value in talking face to face. Where we can, we will keep that up."