Collaboration and the Hybrid Condition of the New Normal

One of the biggest outcomes of the over two years of global pandemic is that we now have two entire classes of new lawyers who have spent little to no time in offices and who have little traditional, in-the-field experience. But that is not to say that their experience in the workplace has been any less fruitful. They were the first ones to adapt to remote working or a hybrid nature of it that we now expect will continue to have an impact on the way law is practiced, at least for the foreseeable future. With evolving mindsets and circumstances, law firms and their clients have all, in recent times, sought to enhance their approach to legal services, and incorporate a condition that is easily accessible, efficient and on the whole flexible enough to accommodate multiple factors and necessities. It is this flexibility that has now become a differentiator when it comes to the practice of hiring and retaining talent – one aided and abetted by the technology that has been on the driver’s seat the whole time. And make no mistake, the younger generation of lawyers are on the path to easily adapt to it and gain the upper hand. So, what is next? What can law firms do to make sure that they provide their clients quality legal service in the manner they have now grown to expect and still maintain the standards for hiring, cultivating, and retaining talent?

The answer is in Collaboration.

Technology has undeniably become a more fundamental part of legal practice. Legal technologists and experts predict that this will undoubtedly be reinforced in areas where machines deliver faster and more accurate results. Most digital solutions, however, either do not address or are unable to address the issues with human interaction and professional development that remote working presents today. Additionally, they won’t make it any simpler for lawyers to serve customers who are spread out geographically. And it is here that effective collaborative tools will play a crucial role.

Current conditions make routine tasks like document exchange, communication, status reporting, and work allocation more difficult than they should be. Additionally, it has always been challenging for law firms and their clients to collaborate within a single platform from both a licencing and compliance standpoint. There aren’t many products in the legal market that are expressly made to function as well between companies as they do within one.

Technology is the backbone upon which the ‘new normal’ is being built. And effective collaboration with clients will be a key differentiator in the new normal. According to 2021 Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer: Moving Beyond the Pandemic Report, law firms that adopted tech quickly during the pandemic profited while those who did not lagged. From sharing and scheduling tools to cloud storage, e-Discovery and online signing tools, collaborative tools are right now shaping the effectiveness and productivity in law firms. And if history is anything to go by, then that is a trend that is sure to stick around for a long time.