February 27, 2025
By Bob Glaves | CBF Executive Director
It is easy to forget how many ways the pandemic changed our lives, as Crain’s Chicago Business reminded us in a great feature this week. And for our legal profession, those changes were some fundamental ones that before the pandemic would have taken decades to get serious consideration.
As we approach the fifth anniversary of when our worlds were turned upside down by COVID-19, I want to return to my 2025 Resolution for the Profession to talk more about the lessons our legal community should take away from this shared and unplanned experience on three interrelated fronts: the role of the office, meetings and conferences, and wellness.
Having focused primarily on the new world of hybrid courts in my initial post for this year’s Resolution, for these three issues I want to start by asking you to think back to your legal life in February 2020 and what we had long taken for granted as normal back then. This is not to suggest that we go back to how we did everything then–which is not the answer–it is to remember that not all was broken and help put our lessons for the future into context.
The Office
February 2020:
The office was where we did the bulk of our work, five or more days a week. We didn’t give that much thought; it was just the way it was.
Some of us had laptops or home computer setups where we could do some of our work at home, but that was almost always a supplement, rather than a replacement, for working in the office.
There were some consultants and other legal professionals who worked from home. They typically traveled a lot and were often going to in-person meetings, but these professionals collectively were a relatively small part of the overall legal workforce.
Today:
It is now conclusively proven that for most lawyers, most of their day-to-day work can be done without having to come into the office. We all, by necessity, figured out a way to get our work done remotely during the height of the pandemic, in some instances more efficiently and effectively than when we were in the office.
But many lawyers and legal professionals, and in some instances entire organizations, have used that knowledge to assume that there no longer is any need for the office, or that everyone only needs to be there on a very episodic basis. And the danger in that approach is that it neglects the many other benefits of the office beyond the tasks we do there.
Collaboration is more effective when teams get to know each other and build trust. This is particularly important for newer people joining firms or organizations. It is much more challenging for them to get to know their peers, learn organizational norms, and find mentors when everyone is not in the office with some regularity. In addition, some people require more structure that comes with being in an office environment, and not everyone has an ideal setup for working at home.
Those of us in leadership positions or more senior managerial roles set the tone for the rest of our teams by being there. If we are there with some regularity, others take their cues from that and can set schedules accordingly. Conversely, if leaders are rarely there, that sends a message too.
Looking Ahead:
The bottom line is that the office still has value in many ways, even if we don’t need it in the same way as pre-pandemic times to do our work.
But that doesn’t mean we need to be there five days a week to reap those benefits. And I say that as a guy who still comes in every day but has found that it doesn’t need to be that way for everyone on our team.
It seems that a minimum of 3 days a week in the office is becoming the most typical “sweet spot” in law, and a recent study suggests lawyers generally can be just as productive with that mix (recognizing that for those of us in public facing roles, more in-office time may be needed).
The flexibility to come in later or leave earlier and then work from home the rest of the day is a real benefit as well when life happens, and it makes for happier team members if they can do that when they have personal obligations.
Meetings, Conferences, and Trainings
February 2020:
Back in the old days, the default for even the most routine meetings was to meet in person. We didn’t give that much thought; it was just the way it was.
When meeting attendees were more far-flung or someone could not make it in person, we turned to the old-fashioned conference call. Those could be useful for smaller meetings involving routine issues, but beyond that I have a hard time remembering a conference call where after it was over I thought, wow, that was a really good meeting.
Today:
Remote meetings are now a regular part of our work lives, with many benefits. Routine meetings can be handled more efficiently and effectively over Zoom now, and we can also better connect with colleagues across greater distances than we ever could using the old conference call method.
That said, it is not a great option for every kind of meeting, particularly for longer or more important meetings that involve significant discussion and consensus building. The distraction quotient is high. Admit it, for many if not most meetings on Zoom or the equivalent, you are catching up on your email, maybe checking the news (generally a bad idea for other reasons), or seeing how the Cubs are doing.
To be clear, this is not to say every in-person meeting is amazing today or ever was in the pre-pandemic era. A bad meeting can be even worse in person, and the same goes for a routine meeting where people have to travel to only to realize it easily could have been over Zoom. Having a well thought out agenda and a good leader or moderator engaging the group remains important no matter the format.
Looking Ahead:
Zoom and its remote counterparts should remain an integral part of our work lives, and conference calls still have a place too, but these tools should be used in moderation. For routine matters or focused topics that need only a relatively short amount of time, these remote options are a much more efficient and cost-effective way to meet.
For more important topics, however, meeting in person makes a big difference in building trust and rapport among colleagues and getting things done. And for meetings where everyone does not already know each other well, it is far easier to do that when you are together in person.
Offering a hybrid option for participation in meetings that are otherwise in person can be more inclusive for people who cannot realistically get there in person, though it does require extra planning and moderation for it to work well and it does not work for everything.
It is a similar story for conferences and trainings. For conferences so much of the value in attending is being able to get away from our routine and interact informally with the other attendees, where I often tend to learn more than in the actual sessions. And for the last several conferences I have attended over the past year, all have been at full capacity with wait lists. People want to get away and be together, and that is a key part of the value.
For other training and CLEs, for focused topics where we are motivated to learn about the issue at hand, remote or hybrid participation continues to be a good bet. The duration and format matters though, and longer and more involved programs work better in person.
Wellness in the Profession
I include wellness as the third prong of this discussion and finish with this topic because it is inextricably intertwined with getting the first two prongs right (and that is not just because it is too easy to check the news during Zoom meetings).
We made great strides as a profession over these past five years in recognizing the importance of wellness but in many ways, the challenges to having a healthy profession have only grown during that time.
And my armchair expert opinion on the reason for that is how much time we have been spending apart from our fellow humans since March 2020 in our work and outside lives. We are social animals and have evolved that way over millions of years, and that is not going to change in five years or even five generations.
Sure, the office can be a reign of terror in the wrong hands, and we’ve all sat through stultifying in-person meetings or presentations where we’ve seen the guy nodding off (or maybe even been that guy).
So being together in person most of the time is no guarantee of success, but it is a big part of it. Beyond that, the noted wellness expert Erin Clifford regularly gives good real-world tips that busy lawyers and legal professionals can realistically incorporate into their lives and recently did a great program for the CBA that is available as an on-demand webinar for members. The interview I did with Erin back in early 2021 remains a good guide for how each of us can build better habits too, with particularly helpful advice for today’s hybrid world.
Onward With the Pandemic in the Rear View Mirror
As I write this, more people are coming downtown more often than we have seen since the start of the pandemic, and so long as that is not being done with a reflexive “this is the only way to do it” mentality, this is a good thing. As is true with the shift to hybrid courts I talked more about in Part 1 of this year’s Resolution, we don’t want to lose the very real benefits for access and efficiency that remote work and meeting options have offered. We do, however, want to do that with appropriate moderation and understanding.