Viridian Lawyers principal Richard Prangell believes we must go further than mere adaptation of new ways of working – instead, the legal profession can and should seriously consider how to be “digital by default” and “remote first”.

“Lawyers are knowledge workers, and are therefore better placed than most industries to move towards ‘[remote-first]’ work. Nearly all of the tools in a lawyer’s toolbox are digital and can be completed from anywhere, our work is easily broken into discrete tasks, and we closely measure most of our workplace outcomes in the form of billable hours. On the other side of the equation, the need to meet with a client in-person arises less frequently now than ever before,” he told Lawyers Weekly.

Even in a post-COVID-19 world, Mr Prangell said, there is no doubt that the future of work in professional services will be distributed.

“Many of the world’s largest technology companies are already using COVID-19 to pivot their businesses to remote-first work, including Facebook, Twitter, Shopify and Spotify. When the lockdown is over, it’s expected that most of their staff will never go back to the office,” he said.

There are plenty of reasons, he espoused, to justify law firms becoming “remote first”.

“Most significantly, there is now quite a bit of evidence to suggest that [remote-first] work is overwhelmingly better for the happiness and mental health of employees,” Mr Prangell posited.

“There are also countless business advantages for ‘[remote-first]’ work. Savings on leasing costs are obvious, but a [remote-first] workplace can also be a distributed workplace, which means that the best employees can be sourced from anywhere in the world at any time, and need not live within commuting distance of wherever you happen to have your office. The ability to work from home, or from overseas, is also a very compelling hiring tool.

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“Remote workers don’t need to be in the same time zone, making a truly 24-hour workplace possible – improving responsiveness and client outcomes.”

What will hold the profession back from going to such lengths in its post-pandemic evolution, Mr Prangell mused, is cultural considerations.

“There’s a tendency towards ‘presenteeism’ and ‘workaholism’ in the legal industry, and there are some workplaces where management [has] low levels of trust in their employees. In these cases, falling back on the familiar is going to be a lot easier than genuine cultural change, and I suspect we’ll see a lot of short-term backsliding post-lockdown,” he predicted.

Even taking that into account, though, he sees firms that are bold and willing to take the plunge as being institutions that will thrive in the future.

“Over the [long-term] though, more efficient firms will be able to offer better outcomes to clients, and firms that refuse to change with the times will eventually fail,” Mr Prangell concluded.