It’s the screen team

When we carried out our annual Legal IT landscapes research in November/December 2019, the section on agile working and hotdesking made for some slightly puzzling reading. We’ve long tracked how firms are doing in terms of having ‘significantly’ (over 10%) more employees than desks in the office for them all – and have generally found increased appetite for the arrangement year after year. More firm leaders say they are already doing it; and of those that aren’t, more expect to get there sooner than said as much the year before.

Nothing very surprising there – office space is expensive, so it’s good if you don’t need to fill quite so much of it up with boring desks. You may simply need less space – or you might want to get more creative with those break-out spaces and client-facing areas instead. And after all, people quite like to work from home, right?

HOMEWORK FOR ALL

In the closing moments of 2019, law firm leaders reported they believed 42% of their people then regularly worked from home – but they’d like to see over three-quarters enabled with the technology to do that. How have firms handled the process of establishing remote business-as-usual in such unusual times? Richard Brent reports

TECH-IN TOGETHER

Transformation has never been easy, with digital transformation having an even lower success rate than the traditional variety. Jem Sandhu speaks to some of the key players with a part in the new digital law group launched by Herbert Smith Freehills

VIRTUALLY POSSIBLE?

Are IT and management systems truly ready to enable lawyers to work remotely long term? Dan Taylor, director of systems and security at Fletchers Solicitors, surveys the scene