So… We Gonna Do This Summer Thing Or Not?: A lot of summer associate programs are in limbo.
Are We Doing The Bar Exam In The Fall Now?: Still no decision, but the deadline is coming up fast.
Just To Be Clear, Is This Not An Emergency?: Judge displeased with “emergency” deposition scheduling motion.
What Is The Constitution Anymore?: Mark Meadows getting upfront with his constitutional breaches.
(Image via Getty)
According to 2019 financial data collected by ALM, which Biglaw firm grossed $2.337 billion in 2019, which is a 5.3 percent increase over 2018?
Hint: Gross revenue at the firm increased for the ninth year in a row. Profits per equity partner increased 10.5 percent — to $2.82 million — though the firm lost a net 21 equity partners, down 6.4 percent.
See the answer on the next page.
This is a story about law school and COVID-19, but it’s remarkable how it’s basically a redux of this post about divorce law in the UK. In that story, a man who caught his lawyer wife cheating asked Reddit if he should trust her legal advice that the divorce would be a lot better for him if he just never brought up this whole adultery thing. The wisdom of crowds replied, “Of course not.”
Because when someone has a vested interest in keeping something quiet to your detriment, they probably don’t have your best interests at heart.
Now comes the University of Georgia School of Law, which isn’t offering any pass/fail options at this time because the curve must go on!
According to tipsters, the school’s defense is that the University System of Georgia is blocking the modification so it’s out of the law school’s hands. Certainly everyone has a higher master, and if the system is blocking accommodations, there’s not much the law school can do. And it wouldn’t be shocking if that were the case since Governor Brian Kemp spent the last couple weeks trying to stay simpatico with Trump on the virus. He even decried fake reports that Georgia was in an emergency, which was an ironic twist since Kemp won his office by… spreading false reports. You’d think he’d be more sympathetic.
But it seems UGA Law officials are counseling students not to talk to the media or the University System of Georgia which seems suspect because if this is really USG’s policy that would be exactly who students should be contacting. “They said we don’t want to throw away ‘the good faith and effort the faculty had tried to build’… and throw the school under the bus.”
Like the cheating wife’s legal advice, when someone tells you not to contact the media, it should raise a red flag that you should definitely contact the media. Their motive is in protecting themselves and not necessarily you. And, assuming this really is some edict handed down upon the law school, it’s fair to be sympathetic to their position. They will likely get blamed by short-sighted bureaucrats for “allowing” the students to lodge complaints and that sucks for them. But in the legal world, you have to protect your interests and if students feel that a pass/fail option is in their best interests, they need to be spreading the word.
Earlier: Reddit Law School Rides To Rescue After Cheating Lawyer Wife Tries To Set Terms Of Divorce
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
As we enter a new decade of eDiscovery, we continue to follow the rise of new laws and tech advancements. From emerging collaboration platforms to the latest in privacy laws, the changes in the industry can feel overwhelming — leaving us sprinting to keep up.
To figure out how to best adapt to these changes, I sat down with five trusted eDiscovery experts to hear their go-to approaches. Read on for some fresh perspectives and hacks to apply to your eDiscovery process in 2020 and beyond.
1. Ask These Questions Before You’re In The Throes of eDiscovery
Robert D. Brownstone, Esq., Fenwick & West LLP.
A major eDiscovery pain point for many legal teams emanates from the preservation, extraction and review of data from communication/collaboration platforms. Robust, versatile tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Atlassian Chat, HipChat, Evernote, and Wickr are all still relatively new, making their day-to-day information management still uncharted territory. Yet, the inevitable data request can strike at a moment’s notice, plunging a team into reactive mode. So, every company’s legal team should follow the motto of the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts and even the wacky myriad-horned goat in the animated film Hoodwinked: “Be Prepared.”
Ediscovery preparedness should be proactive before the corporate “body is on the table.” It’s crucial to have engaged in some effective advanced planning. To do so, ask the correct questions before you’re in the throes of eDiscovery. Here’s a list of some key inquiries to prepare your team. An organization that deploys one or more of these platforms should assess each tool, understand its auto-delete settings and routinize its approach to eDiscovery.
For the platform itself…
1. Is it hosted internally?
2. Is it in the cloud by an outside company and/or the purveyor of the software /platform?
3. Is it a free version as opposed to a for-fee version?
4. If it is a for-fee version, then which version is it?
For retention and capture…
1. Is content routinely logged in a given platform?
2. Is logging the default?
3. If no-logging is the default, do the settings allow individuals and/or teams to turn on logging ad hoc or in general?
For auto-deletes…
1. Are auto-delete rules in place or should they be? [e.g., age-based and/or volume-based]
2. If there is not any auto-deletion rule, is there a routine by which a platform’s administrator, a team leader and/or anyone in IT manually deletes content?
3. If there is an automated or manual process, is there a protocol that delineates a process and, if not, then who will collaborate to write one up?
4. Whatever is or isn’t memorialized, what actually happens in the trenches — including vis-à-vis pertinent users and/or teams — as to retention, logging, deletion and the like?
2. APIs Are The Keys to Your Data
Olga V. Mack, CEO & General Counsel, Parley Pro
When assessing eDiscovery tools, there’s so much that goes into finding the right platform. From user permissions to deployment options, there’s always a number of features you’ll want to tick off before settling on a solution. One feature you may have heard about in the IT world, but maybe don’t know enough about, are APIs or Application Programming Interfaces. If you’re an eDiscovery professional, APIs will become increasingly important for you in this new age of technology. Here’s why:
When it comes to data collection, it goes without saying you’ll want to collect data in its most native, defensible format. With the rise of newer communication and collaboration tools, collecting defensible data is getting trickier and trickier. Why? The more dynamic capabilities in a platform, the more dynamic the data. Take eDiscovery for Slack for example. The more dynamic its data is, the harder it is to extract in a comprehensive way. APIs are the solution to this problem — they’re essentially what allows applications to talk to one another and transfer data from one system to the next.
For example, when you post a photo to Instagram, you’re given the option to simultaneously post it to Facebook. The reason Facebook is able to automatically populate the same photo, location, caption, etc. is because Instagram’s open API transferred all of the data that makes up that post over to Facebook seamlessly. Apply this same idea to your eDiscovery tool, and it can seamlessly extract and transfer data from any of your apps such as Slack, Gmail, or Dropbox.
Without an API, eDiscovery professionals must resort to screengrabs which won’t hold up as valid evidence. Think of the application you’re collecting from as a house, and APIs as the keys to that house — without an API connection, you can only see what’s on the outside of the house. However, with an API connection, you can see what’s going on inside the house. APIs are what turn surface-level information into valuable insights, and that is what makes the difference.
2. IT & Legal: Learn Each Other’s Languages
Nicole Thompson, Head of Client Success, Onna
As a vendor in the eDiscovery space, I work with both legal and IT teams to ensure our product is utilized to its fullest potential. As the years progress, I’m seeing a greater need for collaboration between these two teams. Each should have a shared strategy on how to tackle enterprise data / shared workflow — especially when it comes to onboarding new eDiscovery and compliance tools. The sophistication of today’s legal technologies has caused a high demand for lawyers who have IT expertise as well as IT professionals who have legal expertise. As the platforms we collect from become more complex, having transparency and alignment between these two teams is crucial.
The first step towards transparency and alignment is understanding every data source on the company tech stack. I recommend that IT and legal have monthly or quarterly check-ins to see what tools have been onboarded and how they’re being used. This ensures everyone’s on the same page, and there are no surprises when the inevitable eDiscovery request comes. When analyzing your tech stack, you may want to create a shared questionnaire to understand the limitations/considerations of existing data sources. This questionnaire can also help set your team up for success when evaluating future tools.
Potential Questionnaire:
4. Math Will Set You Free
Benjamin Sexton, VP of eDiscovery and Analytics, JND Legal Administration
Opposing parties often struggle to effectively negotiate data scope and reduction methodology. In one scenario, they attempt to negotiate the parameters of AI algorithms, where learning curves are steep, and technical decisions have a sweeping impact on which documents are exchanged. In another scenario, parties negotiate data scope using keyword lists, seeking transparency, usually at the expense of the quality.
As a best practice, I advise clients to avoid pigeon-holing themselves into a specific document retrieval or AI-driven review strategy. Rather than negotiate a specific document retrieval/AI workflow, I recommend negotiating the quality standards that must be met by the production.
To dive deeper into this idea, let’s take the Elusion Test in Relativity for example. The Elusion Test is a great way to statistically validate the results of a population reduction workflow. You can do this by simply demonstrating that the “discard” pile is nonresponsive to the matter. One can agree to run a statistically valid random sampling of the null set before any documents are discarded, to verify that they are unresponsive.
Often the best workflow for population reduction isn’t one-size-fits-all and can change throughout a case as issues and data types are introduced in the matter. It isn’t uncommon that we may use Active Learning, keywords, communication analysis, and clustering in one case to identify a review set and eliminate non-responsive documents. Rather than justify each button we click along the way from A to B, we use statistics to justify the results for opposing, without hamstringing our team to a single predefined methodology. Quality standards are easier to negotiate, and arguably more important, than methodology.
5. Turn Custodian Interviews into Production Interviews
Amy Sellars, Assistant General Counsel and Director, Discovery Center of Excellence
, Cardinal Health
Before our tech skills kick in, our people skills are of utmost importance. I am an evangelist for early and in-person custodial interviews. Meet with your custodians in person whenever possible and give them context for the data interview. Phone is second best — an electronic interview might actually be worse than nothing. A standardized custodial interview form is a must, but the interview should be a conversation. During subsequent conversations with custodians, remember to ask if anything has changed about their data use. Discovery is iterative.
As custodians share information about the data they use and access, think about what that data will look like when you actually produce it. For example, when a custodian lists a database as one of the data sources related to a matter, ask for sample reports that you can use in your 26(f) or state equivalent to set expectations with other parties and the judge. Talk with the database administrator right away, and ask for the number of records that might be implicated — will that affect the possible format of production? Conduct your interviews with a finished production in mind.
About Onna
Onna is a data integration platform that helps legal teams collect from today’s most popular enterprise apps in a quick, and painless way. Built with a powerful API infrastructure, we help some of the biggest names in tech secure, access, and search across all of their enterprise information to find exactly what they need. Set legal holds, personalize retention policies, review and collaborate on evidence, and when you’re ready, export data into the review platform of your choice. (Yes, we’re compatible with them all!) Download our eDiscovery Guide for Emerging Applications to learn more or go ahead and contact us!
Perspective. That’s really the key to litigating (or homeschooling or shopping or everything) during a global health crisis. That’s the point that Wachtell partner William Savitt was making when he took issue with lawyers getting their panties in a bunch over “nonessential” cases. And it looks like Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman totally agrees.
The case is CW v NCL (Bahamas) Ltd, No. 19-cv-24441 (SD FL), and it started as a scheduling “snafu” over a corporate representative deposition. Which really — even absent COVID-19 — shouldn’t be that big of a deal. But the plaintiff unilaterally scheduled the deposition and defendants filed an emergency motion for a protective order, and well, Judge Goodman has had just about enough of this foolishness.
His order pretty quickly tells the parties to get a grip:
Presumably, the parties will reschedule the hearing if they still can’t on their own resolve a routine deposition scheduling snafu. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to offer some observations in the “let’s-keep-things-in-perspective” department.
The entire world is in the midst of a pandemic. Thousands of people worldwide have contracted the Corona virus and there have been hundreds of virus-caused deaths in the United States. Millions of Americans have been ordered to remain in their homes. Millions more have lost their jobs in the past two weeks. The stock market has taken a brutal beating in the last two to three weeks. Many people are scared. Others are panicked. Everyone is unsure about the future. Cruises have been canceled and all the major airlines have severely curtailed their flights.
We are living in an unprecedented situation.
Nevertheless, the lawyers in this case have been exchanging snippy emails over the past two weeks over the scheduling of a corporate representative deposition. Moreover, defense counsel certified that this routine discovery dust-up is so important that it merits “emergency” status.
No, it doesn’t.
And the order goes on, slamming plaintiff for thinking the defendant — a cruise line, no less — would be able to comply with the deposition request right now:
Local Rule 7.1(d) requires a movant seeking emergency relief to certify that a “true emergency” exists because meaningful relief could not be provided on “a critical, non-routine” issue within seven days. (emphasis added).
A spat over the specific day of a corporate representative deposition is hardly critical. It is, in fact, routine.
Moving past the incorrect and, frankly, reckless designation of this dispute as an “emergency,” the Undersigned is shocked that counsel could not on their own resolve the issue. Given the health and economic crisis we are in, not postponing the deposition scheduled for next week is patently unreasonable.
If all the issues we are currently facing were to be organized on a ladder of importance, this deposition-scheduling dispute would not even reach the bottom rung of a 10-rung ladder.
It is painfully obvious that counsel for both sides failed to keep their comparatively unimportant dispute in perspective. Would the world end if the corporate deposition did not occur next week? Obviously not. Is it reasonable to require defense counsel to prepare the 30(b)(6) witness for a deposition while complying with the social distancing standard of ten feet? Absolutely not. Is it rational to expect defense counsel to enlist assistance from cruise ship attorneys and other employees (e.g., to track down documents and information) to adequately prepare the corporate representative when the entire cruise ship industry is on lockdown and thousands of employees have been let go? Of course not.
So the deposition will not be taken next week. Life will go on. But the Undersigned will be requiring counsel for both sides to appear for a hearing at some point, even if they work out the rescheduled date for the corporate deposition. That hearing will require the attorneys to explain their behavior in context of the far-more-important issues this Court (and the entire world) is facing.
I don’t even have much to add. Judge Goodman handles the matter with aplomb. You can only imagine the finger-pointing that will go on when the attorneys are dragged in front of the judge to explain themselves.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
(Image via Getty)
“Working on the weekend like usual / Way off in the deep end like usual / They swear they passed us, they doing too much / Haven’t done my taxes, I’m too turned up.” — Drake
For those in Biglaw or following the uber-competitive, but rather frictionless path to Biglaw — and have already secured an offer post-law school graduation — this article may not seem relevant to you. But sometime in the future, it may be something you’ll want to reference.
For those who run their own practice or wandering down a non-traditional legal path, this post may be especially timely.
Regardless of where you are in your career, it is important to take stock of your personal inventory and be intentional about your long-term trajectory. But I’m not sure I’m telling you anything you don’t already know — as a lot of this advice may seem like I’m preaching to the choir.
On Wednesday, I hosted my 22nd presentation for my former company. The theme was “Advocating for Your Career and Self-Care.” My guests were Kurt Merriweather, Vice President of Strategy and Transformation at Walk West, and Nickeyea Wilkinson, my former colleague who was featured on ATL a few weeks back.
Merriweather, whose presentation can be seen here, discussed the power of being different in charting your career and company impact. The key takeaways were:
Wilkinson’s fireside chat can be viewed here. Wilkinson also told her story in the ATL article “We are Failing Women Of Color and It Is Fatal — A Discussion with Hampton, NCCU Law Alum Nickeyea Wilkinson and Howard, NYU Alum Ashlee Wisdom.” As Wilkinson shared with us:
Silently, I endured many years of physical and mental anguish because of fibroids. Realizing that there is a need for support motivated me to create this video, along with several others.
These videos [that make up my video project] are small ‘snippets’ of a larger documentary on the ‘black women’s experience’ with fibroids that I want to create. I hope that the videos will encourage women to open up about their own health issues, spark conversations, and garner support from leaders representing both the private and public sectors of healthcare, technology, and academia.
I hope to share my story and connect with other women who may share similar experiences and/or conditions. It is now my mission to spread awareness about women health issues, particularly issues impacting women’s reproductive health, as well as voice my concerns about the lack of information, research, and support, especially as it relates to fibroids.
Fibroids have been donned the ‘black women’s disease’ because of how disproportionately fibroids affect black women. I often feel that there is an angle or narrative echoed when we are discussing health issues that greatly impact minorities. And, too often, such discussion does not reflect the minority’s perspective. I want to change the narrative and create opportunities for open and honest discussion. My voice is a result of my own silence. While it is my ‘right to remain silent’ and keep personal health experiences confidential, doing so does nothing for the greater good.
I believe that our life purpose(s) is married to our desires and experiences. Beyond having a flourishing legal career, I desire to be a wife and a mom. The fact that I am dealing with issues that can impact my fertility, is a threat to my desires.
However, I am an incredibly optimistic person and a woman of faith. I will use my experiences with fibroids and ovarian cysts as a testimony and an encouragement tool. I do believe that sharing my story and advocating for other women, is one of my life’s purposes. Everything does happen for a reason!
Please seek out opportunities to advocate for your health. Share your individual story. You never know who your story is giving a voice to!
My talk on #SocialCapital is available here. It was the first presentation I ever gave at the company, so I thought it apt to also be my last presentation at the organization as well. It’s a very condensed presentation of the one I did for the 12th Annual Legal and Inclusiveness Conference in Denver, Colorado in 2018.
Borrowing significantly from Reid Hoffman’s and Ben Casnocha’s book “The Start-Up of You” (also mentioned in past writings here and here) and Cal Newport’s book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” I coaxed the audience to think of their career as a startup.
These two excerpts from Hoffman’s book are the core foundation of my #SocialCapital talk:
All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves, we were all self-employed … finding our food, feeding ourselves. That’s where human history began. As civilization came, we suppressed it. We became ‘labor’ because they stamped us, ‘You are labor.’ We forgot that we are entrepreneurs. — Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and microfinance pioneer…
Whether you’re a lawyer or doctor or teacher or engineer or even a business owner, today you need to also think of yourself as an entrepreneur at the helm of at least one living, growing start-up venture: your career.
It is no secret, we as a society are going through a very difficult time — to say the least. Uncertainty abounds and it is breeding anxiety, fear, and xenophobia. We need to remember our various jobs and entire careers will have an expiration date. But our everyday actions will not.
In times like these, I often think of Maya Angelou’s words: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” and “courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtues consistently. You see — you can’t be consistently kind, fair, humane, or generous. Not without courage. Because if you don’t have it, then sooner or later you’ll stop and say — the threat is too much, the difficulty is too high, and the challenge is too great.”
In dealing with fear and anxiety, we cannot just put our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening around us — staying entrenched to the “business as usual” mindset. Now more than ever, we must be vigilant in assuring we progress as a society. At the end of this COVID-19 pandemic, who do we want to be? When it all said and done, there will be a lot said, but how much will actually be done? Our country is struggling to breathe. When it’s resuscitated, will it be better off? Or will the actions and means we undertook continue to haunt our dreams? Justice isn’t self-executing, it must be fought for every step of the way.
It is indeed important for us to be intentional about our respective careers and long-term prospects. But it’s also critical we help each other, especially those who are most in need, during this tumultuous time. As best-selling author Brad Seltzer famously implores: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”
Please join us in wishing David Lat — who has shown “mild improvement” in recent days, but whose prognosis is still uncertain — a speedy recovery from COVID-19.
Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.
For “originalists,” those Tea Party guys sure know how to get jiggy when they’re actively interpreting the Constitution. Article 1, Section 6 would seem to unequivocally bar a sitting congressional representative from simultaneously serving in the executive branch.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
And yet, North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows appears to be doing just that. Escándalo!
Meadows was named White House Chief of Staff on March 6, when Trump rewarded Mick Mulvaney for his loyal service during the impeachment trial by unceremoniously shoving him in the direction of Northern Ireland.
Meadows certainly appears to be serving as COS, accompanying Treasury Secretary Mnuchin on marathon negotiations with Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer this week to hammer out the coronavirus stimulus package. White House Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow stood next to Trump at Tuesday’s press briefing and referred to “Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows,” and Meadows hasn’t voted on any legislation since March 5.
Chief of Staff isn’t a position which requires senate confirmation, so … sounds like Meadows is COS, right?
Not so fast!
“Mick Mulvaney is still the acting chief, officially,” Meadows told Roll Call Tuesday, adding later, “I’ll end up resigning as a member of Congress, and that happens toward the end of the month.” Luckily, Meadows has served for more than five years, so he can start collecting a full congressional pension at 62.
The distinction (without a difference) appears to be that Meadows isn’t yet officially on the White House payroll. In this, he continues in the proud tradition of his predecessor, who remained the Acting COS for over a year, retaining his title as head of the Office of Management and Budget “because it’s a $20,000 pay cut.” In fact, he still holds that job (presumably depriving his deputy of the pay bump), in addition to acting as White House Chief of Staff and also Special Envoy Designate to Northern Ireland awaiting confirmation.
So, in summary, Mulvaney has three jobs, none of which he appears to be performing. Meadows has two jobs, in contravention of the Constitution. And the president carried out his solemn responsibilities today by posting twelve tweets before lunch time.
Constitutional originalism, FTW!
Mark Meadows really isn’t Donald Trump’s chief of staff — yet [Roll Call]
As the crisis continues, who’s the White House chief of staff? [NBC]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
A headline like, “The unluckiest people at Deutsche Bank,” is the juiciest imaginable clickbait. Talk about begging the question! I mean, how would one even go about determining such a thing, given that “person at Deutsche Bank” is already about the unluckiest thing a human could be? Please, tell me more about these most pathetic and pitiable creatures, ones who even other Deutsche Bankers shudder at the thought of.
Well, it turns out that Deutsche Bank still wants to act like a top bank, even though it demonstrably isn’t, and as such is following their lead by promising not to lay off any more people while the coronavirus continues to ravage the global economy. (Unlike, you know, everyone else.) Sure, may ask its people to go on the dole as part time workers, but no one will be sent packing in an emergency. Except for those among the 18,000 getting the ax who were pretty far along in getting the sack. While those who’ll be fired once the crisis passes are temporarily spared “to avoid emotional distress in the current environment,” the others are being sent out into a desolate and deserted world.
Deutsche Bank said in the memo it will complete all discussions with individual staff about layoffs that have already been initiated. The vast majority of those discussions have been signed and are near finalization, it said.
These people would seem to be unluckiest. Back in January or February when they were informed of their imminent job losses life was still normal. Now they’re being ejected into a very different scenario. While there is still hiring happening, the next few months could be hard and walking into a new job is unlikely. Nor will they be able to avail themselves of government schemes to subsidize the incomes of people put on pause during the crisis.
But will they get to keep their e-mail accounts?
Deutsche Bank Delays Historic Job Cuts Program as Virus Spreads [Bloomberg]
Morning Coffee: The unluckiest people at Deutsche Bank. JPMorgan’s equity derivatives business now up >100% on last year [eFinancialCareers]
Deutsche Bank studies state aid for staff in coronavirus crisis [Reuters via Yahoo! Finance]
Record Rise in Unemployment Claims Halts Historic Run of Job Growth [WSJ]
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.
Replicate What Works Best For You
There may be as many articles advising on best practices to work from home as there are attorneys in the workforce. While some suggestions are less applicable to legal work than others, often the simplest approach is best: take stock of what about your workplace makes you productive and do your best to replicate those qualities at home.
For starters, it’s paramount to have structure and get into a daily rhythm. Stick to your regular morning routine, eat breakfast, and pause to appreciate the extra time you have since you are not commuting today. If you are a morning gym person and now find yourself without a facility due to the temporary closures, try to do some sort of physical activity whether it is outside — with proper social distancing — or at home with or without gym equipment. If your body is accustomed to morning exercise, a sudden shift away from this habit may throw your day off balance more than you initially realize.
Next, you’ll want to assess how your work-from-home environment compares to a normal day at the office. Are you used to a relatively quiet office with few interruptions but now have family members, especially young children, who are competing for your attention? You may need to shift to start working a bit earlier and accept that you will need more frequent breaks to attend to your family’s needs. Creating schedules for your school-age children and sticking to them on the weekdays will give them much-needed structure by making it feel more like school. Temporarily loosening screen-time restrictions may also be a worthwhile tradeoff for the time being.
Conversely, are you used to a relatively busy office and now find yourself in a quiet apartment? You may instead need to build in some interruptions to make your day progress more “normally.” One method that many who work from home have found focuses their attention and energy is the Pomodoro Technique. In short, this calls for you to plan your work as much as possible in 25-minute chunks (“pomodoros”), each followed by a 3-5 minute break. After several pomodoros, you should take a longer break (15-30 minutes). Use the time to refresh your coffee, check your messages, or do whatever you would normally do at the office for a quick break. The relative shortness of the working time allows you to maintain focus while the breaks will make your day seem more like a busy day at the office with regular interruptions.
In addition to the strictly work-related conversations you have in an office every day, any communal workspace also provides daily “watercooler moments.” We may not realize how valuable these interactions are until a situation like a sudden shift to working from home occurs. Find some time throughout the day to recreate these moments by checking in on co-workers to maintain a sense of cohesion in a chaotic time. Even better, if you have a scheduled team call, make an effort to spend a few minutes to ask how everyone is doing instead of jumping right into business.
Move. Whether it’s a walk around the block with your dog, checking on the kids in another room, or even doing a few stretches, for many people working from home means more sitting than your body may be used to. Listen to your Apple Watch, set a reminder on your phone, or just make a point to stand every hour.
Set “defined” boundaries and endpoints for your work. For attorneys, this is easier said than done, but working from home means work can naturally stretch more easily into family and dinner time than if you had to leave the office and commute. If you can, close your laptop, ask the family how they’re doing–or, if you live alone, check up on a friend who is also working from home alone–and revisit work emails after what would be your usual break to commute home.
Finally, for those accustomed to being in an office, it can be difficult to appreciate all the work you’ve actually accomplished in a day if you’re doing it in a room next to where you had your breakfast. Take a moment to appreciate all that you were able to accomplish remotely today and take a moment to appreciate that your job affords you this luxury.
Mental Health Resources
With the shift to remote-working and social distancing comes the potential for increased isolation and loneliness and it is important to maintain good mental health. Mental health professionals have offered specific guidance. As ATL recently detailed here, some suggestions by law firm mental health consultant and certified alcohol and drug counselor Patrick Krill are to limit pandemic-related news and media intake to combat anxiety, and as lawyers already have an increased risk for isolation and loneliness, it is important to schedule and follow-through on times to check-in with family and friends via video. National and local bar associations also offer mental health resources for attorneys. The ABA Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs has a centralized online COVID-19 mental health resource center with a range of mental health resources for legal professionals during COVID-19, including information on crisis support lines, online support groups for depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, articles and books on coping strategies, and guidelines for law firm operations and management. The Lawyers Depression Project also offers a confidential forum and bi-monthly online peer to peer support group meetings for those in the legal profession suffering from depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.
We are also grateful to see many firms implementing wellness and mental health initiatives, including resources such as licensed therapists, certified coaches, meditation programs, billable hour credit for time spent on mental health/mindfulness, and having dedicated firm-wide directors of well-being.
Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Paul Dorfeld and Jesse Hyde are Directors based in the Chicago office where they oversee attorney placements and client services in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. They specialize in placing associates, partners, and in-house counsel with leading Am Law 100 and 200 law firms and premier corporations.
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