It is safe to say that remote working is here to stay and that it’s unlikely that any legal practice will operate in exactly the same office bound way again.

While we have spoken to senior leaders who say that teams need to be in the office in order to be truly productive and train younger members of staff including trainees, what COVID-19 has shown us is that, whether we like it or not, even the most traditional law firm’s output is not inexorably tied to bricks and mortar.

It is highly likely that law firms will look at reducing real estate and moving to a more flexible model, which in the short term will be necessitated by the need to maintain social distancing.

So, what did our respondents say they are looking to change to better support remote working now and in the future?

Home equipment

Again, of those that would make changes, home equipment features highest, with respondents still grappling with a lack of monitors and the need to improve the home office set up. Even the few law firms that can congratulate themselves on everyone having a laptop prior to lockdown need to now think about how to maintain efficiency if employees continue to work from home longer term.

We know of one US law firm whose staff have long all worked from laptops and which has a mirror, two-screen set up in the home environment. While that is still highly unusual, there is a big question hanging over how efficient and accurate staff can be – particularly over a lengthy period of time – when working in a far inferior home set up.

Here are some of the comments as to what respondents are looking to change to support remote working going forward.

“More monitors for users.” UK patent attorney

“Home office setup.” CIO, magic circle law firm

“Additional equipment for long-term home working: monitors, chairs etc.” IT director, Scottish law firm

“Help with user's home configurations e.g. monitor/desk setups, router issues, poor Wi-Fi, help renegotiate broadband contracts, etc.” Systems developer, North West UK law firm

VPN/VDI

Remote working has inevitably added multiple security challenges, including how you ensure the safety of your employees’ network, which is why respondents say that refining virtual private network arrangements have been top of list post lockdown.

If the employee’s network is connected to a VPN, all the data transmitted will be encrypted. However, the huge increased volume of traffic placed on VPNs has caused major challenges, necessitating the addition of remote access servers and load balancers.

Interestingly, no-one responding to our survey mentioned moving to a zero trust security model.

Responses included:

“Refining end point, VPN and security measures.” IT director, UK top 100 law firm

“Moving to HA VPN, increased IT headcount.” IT director, UK top 100 law firm

Other respondents simply made comments along the lines of ‘more VPN’ or ‘cloud VDI’.

Broadband/bandwidth

With entire families working from home, it’s unsurprising that bandwidth and broadband were immediate priorities for firms post-COVID-19. We have split this from VPN but if you were to combine the two, it would be by far the biggest priority for respondents after the lockdown hit.

Responses included:

“Broadband capacity in the community.” Operations director, UK headquartered international law firm

“Private home bandwidth.” Managing associate, European law firm

“Access to technology needed; higher bandwidth to support video.” Market intelligence manager, US law firm

Printing arrangements

Printing is a frequently reference topic in our survey, but what’s interesting is the split between those who say that having local printers and scanners would have been better and those saying that printing needs to be phased out completely. It is worth noting that many large firms with financial institutions for clients are prohibited from connecting printers to their home computer.

Comments as to what changes will be put in place going forward included:

“Local printing.” IT manager, leading UK, North East and Yorkshire law firm

“Reduced reliance on printing.” IT manager at a South East UK law firm

Collaboration tools

It is patently obvious that collaboration tools have come to the fore in a way that could not have been anticipated pre-COVID-19, with many lawyers embracing tools such as Zoom and Web-Ex to conduct meetings and even court hearings.

Asked what they were focussing on building post COVID-19, these are a few of the comments we received:

“Collaboration tools.” Director of IT infrastructure, Am Law top 20 law firm

“Collaboration tools within Citrix.” Director of IT, North West UK law firm

“Collaboration.” IT director, top Scottish law firm

“Further electronification, more focus on collaboration tools.” IT manager, East Midlands UK law fir