Technology And Leadership Combine To Power Law Firms Through And Beyond The Pandemic

I expanded my weekly direct report meetings to include additional supervisors to ensure consistency of messaging, coaching, personal contact, and encouragement. Other teams in my department followed my lead by including additional layers of supervisors and leaders in their meetings. As a result, we reached every member of our Finance and Accounting team multiple times per week by multiple managers and supervisors.

• Tone from the top. From day one, the firm’s senior management focused on the safety and well-being of our people. We kept the best interest of our employees’ top of mind, knowing that if we took care of our people, they in turn would take care of our internal and external clients. Our firm president has sent a message every week to the entire firm communicating clearly and transparently about our focus on health and safety, our progress, and plans for the future. This open communication has provided a substantial level of comfort and reassurance to our entire workforce. The frequency and transparency of these communications have percolated throughout the firm, with leaders in most of our internal teams following senior leadership’s example.

Some implications for the future

As many professional services firms continue WFH arrangements through the end of 2020, we will continue to learn, but I believe there are a few implications we can already anticipate, including:

• Post pandemic, many administrative and business services employees will seek to WFH for some part of their workweek. Having demonstrated they can manage a productive and efficient support structure in a WFH environment, professional services firms may decide to offer more flexibility and choice to employees about where they work. Some people may choose to return to the office; others will undoubtedly prefer to WFH when they can. Expect firms to consider alternative work arrangements as long as their team members continue to be productive and deliver the required level of client service and performance. While employees will probably have more choice about where they perform their individual tasks, coming together in the office will remain a key component of building and reinforcing firm culture and training. When employees come to the office, it will be for enhanced training, collaborating, and establishing and building personal relationships.

• A corollary to WFH is anticipating the office of the future. While the need for less space may be obvious, the configuration of the office space is not. If hoteling reduces the need for dedicated individual offices and workstations, the need for state of the art collaboration and conferencing space will increase. Firms will want to make the in-office meeting experience exceptional in every way by using sophisticated technology to enhance attendee engagement, as well as the effectiveness of facilitators and speakers.

• Investment in IT will be more critical than ever. Those firms prepared to take on the increased cash flow and expense burdens of greater investment in hardware and software will reap rich rewards in the future. Successful investments in IT hardware and software infrastructure and productivity tools have long lead times, with selection to implementation often lasting up to two+ years. Firms need to consider what their future operational environments will look like. This approach does not mean simply replicating current processes with updated software; firms now have an opportunity to anticipate their internal and external client needs and rethink how to deliver services to meet those future expectations. To paraphrase a sports metaphor, the challenge is to anticipate where our clients will be, not where they are today.

• The need for thoughtful and dynamic leadership is greater than ever. It is much more challenging to lead when many team members are remote than when most are in the office. The burden of communicating more clearly, consistently, and intentionally falls on every level of firm management. While technology helps, particularly video conferencing and collaboration software, leadership—the act of inspiring people to reach new and more challenging goals—must supersede mere managing—the act of getting teams to accomplish an objective. The leadership of every team sets the tone, from the most senior management committee chair to the supervisors of our most junior employees. Every person responsible for overseeing the work of others must be engaged with their teams. They need to listen well, create an environment that welcomes and expects accountability, provide support and coaching, and think innovatively about the best ways to solve problems now and in the future.