Australian Law Firms Share and Cooperate on COVID-19 Response

Law firms typically compete to win clients and engage in battle on opposite sides of a dispute. But in Australia, several firms have been working together to share their operational responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

The chief operating officers at Australian firms such as Clayton Utz, MinterEllison, Allens and Gilbert + Tobin, and at global firms that include Clyde & Co, King & Wood Mallesons and Norton Rose Fulbright, are routinely emailing each other with updates on their latest responses to the coronavirus crisis and with questions on what to do next.

The informal group has shared details on remote working, managing staff that are still working on site, staffing issues and the various IT applications firms are using.

While firms are deploying a range of apps and social media for meetings and communication and to manage workflow, Gilbert + Tobin chief operating officer Sam Nickless says email has proven to be highly effective with the group.

“I think that’s been quite an efficient way to do it because we haven’t had to schedule times or do anything like that. People have just flipped thoughts out or questions out when they’ve needed to,” he said.

The thread came about in early March when Australian firm Clayton Utz had a coronavirus scare, after the grandmother of an employee’s wife was found to have contracted COVID-19, sparking fears that the wife and the employee may also have contracted the virus. Staff at Clayton Utz’s Sydney office were told to work from home while the employee’s wife awaited test results.

Upon hearing the news, Nickless emailed staff at Gilbert + Tobin to ask if they had any close family members who worked at Clayton Utz or if they had recently been working in an office with anyone from Clayton Utz. It turned out that several staff members had partners who worked at Claton Utz and one staff member’s father worked there.

“That just threw it into absolute stark relief how in this industry there are so many connections,” Nickless said. “It became pretty clear that as soon as one firm had an issue and had to deal with it, the ripples through to the rest of us moved very quickly.”

He quickly gathered together all the email addresses of other firms’ COOs and got in touch with them. While it started as a quick way to reach each other if another similar scare were to take place, it quickly morphed into a forum where people shared ideas about remote working and it has continued into what Nickless calls the “resilience stage” of the crisis.

The group confines itself to the noncompetitive aspects of the legal business and doesn’t discuss client work.

“It’s been a real help just to know where others are at,” Nickless said, noting that COOs have to make quick decisions and convince firm partners that those are the right decisions. “It is always helpful in that decision-making for partners to know what other firms are doing and to have real facts on that.”

As the COO of an Australian firm, Nickless says it has also been useful to get a perspective on the crisis response in other jurisdictions from some of the global firms.

“It’s sort of informal. Many of us have never met face-to-face, or even over voice,” he said. “There’s a real generosity of spirit of people coming back with advice or ideas quickly and sharing things that they feel they can.”

The number of daily new COVID-19 cases in Australia is declining and Prime Minister Scott Morrison said last week that restrictions aimed at halting the spread of the virus could be eased in four weeks’ time.

But first, the government wants to put in place increased testing, elevate tracing of cases to an “industrial” level, and ensure there are strong local response capabilities that would enable any hot spots to be locked down.

As of Monday, there were 6,619 known COVID-19 cases in Australia, up by eight from the day before.