The COVID-19 crisis normalised remote work for thousands of law firms and millions of legal professionals all over the world. When lock downs and social distancing became the norm, companies quickly realised that in order to minimise operational breakdowns and avoid huge losses, they needed a way to get employees working outside the office. Enter – remote work.
Of course, the transition to remote work was not easy, especially for legal firms and workers who were used to the traditional “in office” setting and had worked like this for decades. Fortunately, the availability and adoption of remote work technology and tools helped ease the way. This includes tools for:
- Videoconferencing to connect lawyers with each other and with their clients even if they’re not sitting together in person
- Project management to ensure that legal teams can collaborate and communicate better to address concerns and challenges
- Document management to help legal staff access their existing content, create new documents, and collaborate with others to finalise these documents
That said, tools are only as good as the people who use them. Technology can’t replace competent humans, neither can it magically make people productive and efficient.
So how can the leaders and managers at legal firms empower their employees to work better in remote settings?
Here are three ways.
Invest in technology and digitisation
One of the most basic requirements for productive remote workers is IT equipment. This includes:
- Laptops
- WiFi access to the Internet
- VPN
Legal firms must provide these tools to all their remote workers to ensure that workflows are not interrupted, regardless of workers’ locations. Legal professionals also need the right kind of software applications to do their work, including the videoconferencing, project management, and document management tools we mentioned earlier. In addition, they need specialised legal software for transaction management, digital signatures, PDF document creation, metadata removal, document proofreading, and document repair.
Digitisation can go a long way towards creating a productive remote team. It can also help create the paperless office that many law firms have been dreaming about – but failing to achieve it – for decades. For all these reasons, management should not skimp on these tools.
Further, any remote application available to lawyers and their staff must be easy to use and replicate (as much as possible) normal in-office workflows. It must also be cloud-based, and allow them to effortlessly collaborate with their colleagues.
Along with software, law firms must also take care of the cybersecurity challenges of working remotely. They must update their security controls, install security applications such as antivirus and anti-malware, and train all remote staff on how to safely use technology in remote settings.
Train them to be self-sufficient
One powerful way to ensure that remote staff is productive and not wasting time is to train them on “commodity” tasks. Often, legal professionals rely on others such as the IT team or support staff to help them connect to the VPN or format documents. It’s easier to rely on others in an in-office setting. But when everyone is working remotely, it can take longer to coordinate with others and get help, particularly when all workers are already stretched to full capacity.
The best way to get around this challenge is to make staff self-sufficient so they can handle these tasks on their own. To simplify their lives, technology can once again play an important role. Tools with easy user interfaces, user-friendly features, and customisable functionalities can help simplify many kinds of tasks related to document creation and repair, transaction management, due diligence, and more.
At the same time, it’s important not to impose cutting-edge technology that may look fancy but only makes life harder for busy remote workers. Instead, provide tools that enable staff to get all essential tasks done with minimal pain and hassle.
Provide support but avoid micro-management
When teams are no longer working together in the same proximity, it’s vital for leadership to provide all the support workers need to remain productive.
Draconian policies and micromanagement should be avoided. For instance, top management should not demand moment-to-moment updates on status or progress. Instead, they should allow lawyers the freedom they need to do their work their way, and the authority to take autonomous decisions so their work is not interrupted.
Conclusion
For many law firms, teams with remote workers have become the new norm. Even if your firm goes back to traditional, in-office settings, it’s useful to be prepared for another COVID-like situation that may call for a remote work model.
If such a situation occurs, you may not be able to control its circumstances or outcomes. However, you can minimise the pain to your law firm. By adopting the three strategies explained in this article, you can support your team to ensure that they adapt to the situation and deliver the results your company and clients expect.
