POINT OF NO RETURN: Working from home has become the norm 

The old way of practicing law is dead, and the coronavirus killed it.  

If that sounds like hyperbole, ask around. Better yet, look around your local law office. You’ll find fewer staff members congregating at the water cooler, fewer attorneys discussing life and the law in the hallways, and more unoccupied desks than you would have found in 2019. Despite these, most firms have maintained their lawyer count and many have added attorneys and opened new locations.  

Some firms, particularly smaller ones, have permanently adopted wholesale changes caused by a pandemic that required a new normal, whereas others have complied out of necessity while openly longing to get back to “old-school lawyering.” But despite practices’ reboots and relaunches, firm life today vaguely resembles its former incarnation.  

“We’re never going to go back to exactly the way things were, and we don’t need them to,” Allen Robertson, managing partner of Robinson Bradshaw of Charlotte, said last year. “We’re depending on lawyers to basically control their own schedules and act reasonably to support the culture and make a commitment to being together most of the time. Even our most senior lawyers have learned to operate remotely, and that’s going to be a real advantage in the future.”  

Never be the same 

At Brooks Pierce in Greensboro, managing partner Reid Phillips said he learned long ago that things would never be the same. He said more attorneys are showing up to the office than a couple of years ago as they continue to discover what works best for them and their clients.  

“We continue to believe in the value of presence,” Phillips said. “It enhances learning, cooperation, creativity and teamwork. We also believe that our attorneys know what works best for their circumstances. And so, while being clear to everyone about the value of presence, we trust our attorneys to make the right decision about when to be in the office.”  

Phillips added that whether to work remotely, in the office or a combination thereof is often a decision made after much experimentation.  

One might stereotypically assume that older lawyers prefer the office while younger attorneys would rather work from home, but Phillips said that has not been his experience.  

“I think the decision about where to work is often defined more by personality, commuting distance and how conducive the home is to work,” Phillips said. “We have very nice offices, whereas not every residence has a good, quiet, distraction-free and comfortable place to work.”  

Tracking performance  

Betty Temple, U.S. chair and CEO of Womble Bond Dickinson, which has offices in Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Durham and Winston-Salem, said that while there has been a notable increase in office occupancy over the last year or so, many of the firm’s employees “continue to thrive in a hybrid or remote setting.”  

“We try to work with team members on their workplace needs whenever possible,” Temple said. “Respect for the individual is a core value of our firm, and it guides important decisions like this one. Our office administrators do a great job of scheduling social gatherings, lunch-and-learn sessions, holiday celebrations and other events that bring people together.”  

While being absent from the office might have connotations of decreased productivity, Temple said that she has seen no such correlation.  

“The metrics show that our firm is strong and getting stronger,” she said. “Years ago, we pursued a path of growth — if that growth opportunity was a good fit for our firm and our clients — and it has worked out well. But I’m still a corporate attorney at heart, and my professional satisfaction always has been tied to: ‘Are my clients happy? Are we helping them achieve their business goals?’ Those questions must remain our north star.”  

Attorneys and staff members at Moore & Van Allen in Charlotte are increasingly spending more time in their Uptown office, but attendance is still lower than it was pre-pandemic, managing partner Thomas Mitchell said.  

“Any initial pushback to being back in the office has dissipated,” Mitchell said. “Many of our attorneys and staff still have the flexibility to sometimes work from their homes, and they can find a good balance for their lives and work.”  

That balance has led to adaptation.  

“The firm adapted well to take advantage of the improvements that were made in the legal industry during the pandemic in terms of technology and virtual connectivity, and we are very pleased with how it is working to help serve our clients,” Mitchell said.  

At Sodoma Law in Charlotte, Monroe and Cornelius, managing principal Nicole Sodoma said emphatically that while there is no going back to the way things were before, decreasing productivity was never an option.  

“People continued to get divorced through the pandemic, and our employees rose to the occasion to continue to meet those needs,” Sodoma said. “Our productivity before and after the pandemic has remained steady and, in many areas, even increased with the trends for which we have been accustomed since we opened our doors 15 years ago.”  

Progress through pain 

Sodoma said she vividly remembers the day courthouses shut down for the pandemic. Rather than panic, she got to work upgrading her firm’s digital capabilities and beginning to manage the expectations of clients who had pending family law cases related to children, support obligations “and so much more.”  

She said nothing beats connecting in person, but that learning to navigate new frontiers and work together through a crisis as a firm might have been one of the better team-building exercises Sodoma Law has undergone, learning to support its clients and one another through the upheaval and uncertainty.  

“Emerging on the other side, there is no question in my mind that our cohesion and connectedness are better than ever, and I believe that is due to our efforts to keep staff as connected as possible during the early days of the pandemic and focusing on rebuilding that community once we were able in the latter days,” she said.   

Phillips said that going from three offices to more than 175 workspaces presented challenges and allowed firm leaders to think ahead about how to do things better going forward.  

“We’re still having fun at it, but we certainly haven’t conquered all the challenges yet,” Phillips said. “I worry especially about data security with everyone having a laptop and taking them to so many places. With all that having been said, the freedom and flexibility that remote work gives is undeniably a great benefit overall.”  

Mitchell said some old-school ways, such as in-person mentoring and social events, might experience a renewal, but the practice of law will never mirror yesteryear.  

“The pandemic itself was a global tragedy, and it changed the world in ways that we now have an obligation to learn from and make things even better,” Mitchell said. “Some change is slow and deliberate, while other changes are prompted by forces out of our control. I view it as a part of our commitment to our clients and community to be both resilient to change but also responsive and adaptive.”  

Temple said that while the days of every attorney showing up to the office Monday through Friday are a thing of the past, the pandemic merely accelerated an existing trend. She said new approaches that increase productivity and better position attorneys to help clients should be embraced. But this does not mean, she added, that old-school lawyering is dead.  

“‘Old-school lawyering,’ as I’ve always understood it, means getting to know our clients, understanding their needs and concerns, and working tirelessly to serve them,” Temple said. “That never changed, and it never should.”  

Heath Hamacher can be reached at [email protected]. •