Introduction: rapid spread of the coronavirus infection caused restrictions that have affected all areas of social relations. Russian legal proceedings have also changed significantly. The new context revealed problems in ensuring the work of the courts and administration of justice. The purpose of the article is to analyze the problems of the justice system during the pandemic, in particular, the inability to exercise the right to protection, lack of access to justice, violation of procedural deadlines, technical unpreparedness of courts for the implementation and use of information technologies in justice. Methods: general scientific methods (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison and classification, abstraction and axiomatic method); statistical methods; special legal methods such as content analysis of legal acts and interpretation of laws. Results: we have analyzed legislation and compared Russian experience with the level of digitalization of judicial systems in foreign countries. The study indicates a low level of digital transformation of Russian legal proceedings and poor quality of the changes that have taken place. The realization of the right to judicial protection appears to be the most urgent problem. Conclusions: the pandemic showed unreadiness of the Russian judicial system for the rapid implementation of information technologies. However, it seems likely that in the short term, due to the information technology development, it will become possible in some cases to abandon the practice of face-to-face hearings on a wide range of cases.

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One of the global challenges of 2020 was the spread of the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19), which turned out to be the most severe stressful factor for all spheres of public relations. The pandemic contributed to an increase in the number of risks, some of which caused evident harm to many social institutions and systems, and some risks were an incentive for their forced rapid development. The paper studies the risks in the field of criminal justice to recognize typical legal risks and identify new ones caused by the pandemic period. The study identified the existing legal risks in the sphere of criminal proceedings, found out the factors causing additional legal risks during a pandemic, and the legal consequences of such risks. In the study, the authors adhere to the general theoretical concept of risk as a legal phenomenon capable of generating favorable and unfavorable legal consequences. The authors agree with the recognition of the risky nature of the criminal procedure and the right to risk as a resource necessary for the implementation of criminal procedural functions. In the aggregate, it is possible to refer risks in criminal procedure to the procedural risks and to distinguish typical ones among them: the risk of making procedural decisions, risk of performing the defender’s function, professional risk in the investigator’s activity, and the corruption risk. The authors propose to classify specific risks of the pandemic period depending on the resulting consequences, into negative and positive ones. The paper lists some of the most obvious risks of criminal proceedings that have arisen in the context of the spread of the new coronavirus infection.