November Edition 2020

30 » » Less emphasis on the large, city centre presence. The prestige office location has long been a defining characteristic of the large law firm. These offices are a significant fixed asset regardless of whether they are owned, leased or rented. Such offices are likely to be replaced with smaller, flexible spaces where lawyers can meet clients as and when required. » » Distributed agile workforce. Covid-19 has demonstrated people can work effectively from home. The benefits this brings in work-life balance is one which will be hard to convince people to surrender. It is not likely, in most cases, for the entire firm to move to a remote model. Many people want to work in an office but we will see an overall reduction in the number of people who work in an office every day. Dove-tailing with the reduction in the large city office presence, more people will work from home or small satellite offices with less frequent trips to the larger location. » » Flexible working. Again, the experience of the Covid crisis has shown the need for flexible working hours as people have to juggle family, home schooling and work. Early starts, late evenings and flexibility in the day have become the norm. » » Agile technology. The systems that a firm uses must support an agile workforce. That means simplicity of access from any internet enabled location without complex requirements for connectivity. It also means not sacrificing the security inherent in working within an office location. One of the more obvious steps here is for laptops to become the standard piece of desktop equipment for everyone. » » Reduction in on-premises technology. One of the larger costs for a firm is the maintenance of its technology stack. If this is largely on-premises, then not only does this represent a large capital cost but there is a significant on-going cost for people to run the systems and in terms of power and services. This also means that IT staff have to have access to the location at which the servers are stored to maintain them. » » Scalable technology. With a traditional model of IT delivery, the costs associated with its delivery are largely fixed for an extended period (typically a year) with little ability to increase or decrease those costs. As firms respond to a crisis they would require the ability to flex their system capacity, and therefore costs, on a more frequent basis.