How legal firms are adjusting to a hybrid world

When Covid-19 shut everything down in March 2020, professional services firms, like so many office-based companies, quickly moved to a remote working model. The legal profession, dealing as it does with highly confidential material and a lot of paperwork, and often requiring input from many parties including clients, had to adjust rapidly to this new way of working.

Now that things have been opening up, and there has been a move to revert to a full return to the office, how likely is it that legal firms will continue to work in a hybrid way? Francis Hackett, chairman of KPMG Legal Services, believes that hybrid is here to stay. “The flexibility of hybrid working is an attraction to many professions, and I don’t think that’s going to go away in the short term.”

He believes hybrid working comes with a caveat. “Organisations, if they adopt that model, need to commit to working with professionals so that some of the downsides of hybrid working such as feeling less connected to the office and clients are mitigated. 

“Real work needs to happen to address those concerns, otherwise people could feel too remote from both the office and the client, and that’s not good for anyone.”

There’s more to an effective hybrid model than just having the right technology. “I don’t think hybrid working works on its own,” says Hackett. “You have to invest in the technology to ensure people stay connected. You have to put more effort into those things which happen more naturally in an in-person office. 

“Technology used to be seen as an optional extra, but now all in-house counsel are taking it very seriously.”

Manage remotely 

Managing a team remotely requires a different set of skills, says Hackett. “You do need to put more time into talking to people, not just one-to-many but one-to-one. Teams calls are all very well and fine, but in as far as it’s possible meeting with people occasionally for a cup of coffee does make a huge difference in terms of knowing what people are feeling in terms of their working life. 

You need to engender a sense of loyalty...and you can only do that by meeting people and getting to know them

“Although the technology is fantastic, nothing beats actually meeting in person, and you have to fold both in as far as possible. Now, with restrictions eased, I think there’s no excuse for not spending some of your time meeting people in person, be it for lunch or coffee or having some meetings in the office, so the whole thing doesn’t become too remote and too disconnected with business. 

“You need to engender a sense of loyalty with people and in the business and you can only do that by meeting people and getting to know them, and how they’re finding working in that way.”

Presenteeism gone 

Necessity is the mother of invention, says Hackett, when speaking about the swift move to working remotely and its impacts on the legal profession generally. “If anyone had said 2.5 years ago that overnight people would move from working from 8am to 8pm at their desks, to working from a home office at times of their choosing, no one would have believed it and it would have been met with great scepticism from employers that employees would be productive in those circumstances. 

“I’ve worked in legal services for more than 30 years, and there is no doubt there was a culture of presenteeism in professional service firms and law firms, in particular. It’s no bad thing that it’s gone out the window,” he says.
“I never saw the point of people working for 12 hours, when the work could be done in four hours. It rewards inefficiency.”

Hybrid benefits

For a long time, the law has held out as being an area of professional practice which was not susceptible to the same type of rigours such as tax practitioners have introduced in relation to how they report to clients, says Hackett. “A large part of what we do is ‘international business reorganisation’, which are complex transactions to do with multinational companies that may need to reduce the number of companies in their group or move assets intra-group. They’re incredibly complex transactions.

“What we’re finding is that KPMG globally has built a platform which brings an element of science to these transactions and enables us in using technology to report to clients in a much more open and transparent way as to the progress of transactions, and the micro and macro steps of the transaction and how it is proceeding. This also applies across jurisdictions – often there will be multiple jurisdictions and business organisations involved in a transaction.

“What we’re finding is this is something clients really like, because it enables us to have more accountability and transparency on the work we’re doing – something that’s been driven by the necessity of introducing technology in a hybrid working environment.”

Challenges of hybrid 

Hackett says that one of the challenges of operating a hybrid model is that it’s very new, and it’s something that has been “foisted on professional services very quickly as a result of the pandemic. I think at the moment people are still feeling their way through it and figuring out how it works for them. What makes sense is that people need to work out the model that works for their business and when they find a model that works for them, to invest in that model.”

There are challenges and opportunities to both working situations. “Some firms are taking the view that they want their professionals back in the office full time – for two reasons: the first that for young people, it’s a training environment and the best way for training to happen is to go in and see how things are done. 

There are a lot of things that can be done to mitigate risk, from the basic to the complex

“Second, it’s a matter of client service – that client work is not being done in a dispersed manner, all around Ireland, which does have impacts around confidentiality. The work is being done in a secure location with teams that are speaking to each other person to person.” Hackett says there are law firms that have made a virtue of working in-person as a way to enhance client service. 

Cyber security 

Another concern with the move to working remotely and then on to a hybrid model is cyber security and the risk of cyberattacks increasing. “Of course, cyber security is an increased risk, not least for confidentiality of client information,” says Hackett. “If an organisation adopts hybrid as their model, they need to put an amount of resources into training people to realise the dangers and risks of that model and mitigate against them, and there are a lot of things that can be done to mitigate risk, from the basic to the complex. 

“People need to know the risks and there needs to be an element of enforcement so that everyone is satisfied – not least the client – that information is being maintained in a confidential way and the risk to cyber security is minimised.” The risk is never completely eliminated, but it can be managed and minimised.