Among the professional sectors, legal is not known for being on the cutting edge of innovation. Accounting and consulting firms, for instance, invested in remote working infrastructure and shared office spaces long before COVID-19. But once the pandemic hit, law firms were forced to move quickly and implement those measures and others in an effort to keep servicing clients in a wholly different manner.

While the firms that managed the transition without much incident were quick to highlight their success under pressure, many of the same firm leaders framed the new way of doing things as temporary. Remote work was inferior, they said, in part because you can’t teach all of the technical and interpersonal aspects of being a great attorney through a screen, and because it’s less efficient for attorneys who were trained on pen and paper.