The pandemic forced different sectors, including legal professionals, to change their working styles. Lockdown restrictions meant firms needed to develop alternative means of assisting clients, meeting deadlines, connecting teams, and keeping the business afloat.
Virtual Services
The biggest change that legal professionals adapted to is working virtually. Although the legal profession before the pandemic was mostly office-based, the necessary move to remote working allowed lawyers to continue offering their services and keep money coming in. However many firms were not prepared for the impact on their culture, as well as the practicalities of resourcing people to work from home ensuring data confidentiality and health and safety.
Many consultant solicitors, however, have been working in this way for a decade or more. Although self-employed, they are embedded within a dedicated law firm infrastructure which saves on costly office and central team overheads while offering fairer value services to clients and a full range of central support services.
Remote working is more effectively supported using digital practice management platforms designed for access from anywhere in the world, ensuing effective communication between colleagues and clients, while the vast adoption of Zoom and other remote meeting technology during the pandemic ensured that virtual face to face meetings could still go ahead; essential in a people profession where trust and integrity between professionals and clients are key.
Flexible Working Hours
Working in an office can make it easier to regulate your working hours, helping you to distinguish between business and personal time. However, remote working blurred the lines between these two factors, sometimes meaning an unconscious extension of working hours and seeming to be available to take emails and calls at all times of the day and into the night.
A Thomson Reuters survey showed that a fifth of UK lawyers did not want business interactions on weekends. Almost 23% of UK professionals also desired working hours to remain within certain periods on weekdays. They would prefer no communication after 11 pm or before 7 am in this case – not unreasonable!. Compared to the US, where 8% and 16% of respondents agreed to the respective instances, UK lawyers are more eager to establish parameters around their availability.
Despite this, many lawyers generally enjoyed the flexibility experienced when working from home. The shift from fixed working hours enabled greater freedom to carry out their responsibilities. The survey also reported that most lawyers wish to retain some degree of flexibility, with a third of them willing to minimize their compensation for a shorter working week.
Online Courtrooms
Conducting certain courtroom sessions online is one of the key changes that proliferated during the pandemic, although the UK had already made some progress in this area pre-pandemic. This change caused many to wonder, “Is the courtroom a service or a place?” You can say it is both since the virtual courtrooms prove they can deliver justice to clients although there has been some commentary about not picking up the finer nuances, body language etc. In past decades, it was unthinkable that you could get justice outside the physical courtroom, but the pandemic forced a shift in perspective for legal professionals and clients.
Increased Internet Presence
Many law firms rapidly adopted cloud-based technology to manage their businesses, enabling them to operate anywhere as a result of the pandemic. The software also incorporates management solutions to make work easier via tools that help lawyers stay on top of their cases, keep track of clients, and collect electronic payments.
The pandemic also led to a revolution in online marketing and lead generation – a new aspect of their business development for many firms. The more traditional ways of finding clients – networking with introducers, relying on referrals – became much more challenging so law firms had to up their investment in websites, social media and webinars – as well as ensuring that training and development for more junior teams was robust when they were out of the office and not working day to day with experienced team members. .
Attitude Change Toward Freelancing
The Reuters survey showed that many lawyers enjoy working from home due to its flexibility. Remote working also opened many minds to the possibility of freelancing as lawyers seek to retain the flexible lifestyle experienced during the pandemic. Dedicated law firm structures, such as Excello Law, have built sustainable business models supporting consultant lawyers to achieve greater freedom, flexibility and control of their daily working lives.
Self-employment can ease the work/life balance allowing lawyers to choose the best time for handling their workload but also being available for life’s milestone moments.
Another point of freelancing that often attracts lawyers to make the switch is the ability to focus 100% on the needs of their clients. Freed from involvement in law firm management and billing targets, consultant lawyers are invested in developing long-term relationships with their clients because they own the relationship and can determine the fee structure. That could mean investing more time in a start-up or being more widely involved in a client’s overall business strategy.
The pandemic caused unprecedented changes in the legal profession which will have a lasting impact in the future delivery of legal services. It resulted in a new experience for employers and employees, with the lifestyle changes from remote working causing a veritable title wave of interest in self-employment. It is predicted that a third of lawyers will work as consultant solicitors within the next five years as they seek to retain the best of the flexibility they enjoyed during numerous lockdowns, and lose the long hours and presenteeism culture that had typically been regarded as the lawyer’s lot.
