In January—as cases still reached the hundreds of thousands daily—Jeffrey Gray, then-managing partner of Davis Wright Tremaine, and his team of human resource personnel, employment lawyers and benefits attorneys made the unprecedented decision to mandate COVID-19 vaccines as a condition for returning to the office.

After the firm announced, no Am Law 200 firms followed. The prevailing wisdom was to encourage vaccines, not mandate them. The issue was, and continues to be, divisive.