As law firms are still in the process of defining return-to-office policies for 2022, the new COVID omicron variant poses new challenges, particularly for the plaintiffs bar with its specific focus on individual clients. “With our types of cases, it’s important that we are able to meet clients in person,” New York-based Labaton Sucharow partner Carol C. Villegas explained.

While everyone had hoped for the pandemic to end in 2022, with rising infection rates “going into 2022, it’ll cause a bit of an overhang on the plaintiffs side,” Villegas said. The challenges also relate to courts in many parts of the United States still only having partially reopened.