P2P

28 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 F E A T U R E S where your firm has arrived at. Specifically, I'd like to lead your thoughts in a particular direction, and to that end, I would like you to imagine you are walking the empty corridors of your office, sitting alone in the boardroom or taking a seat at your desk. Admire the artwork, the richness of the wood, the view, the ambience. Then take a deep breath, listen to the silence, and know that the firm is still delivering services to its clients; that business is still taking place right now; that revenue is being earned – even though the office is empty. Given this reality, your next thought has to be: "What, therefore, is the value of this physical office space to the firm?" This should be quickly followed by: "How can we evolve from here?" A traditional profession Here's the thing. Law is a deeply traditional profession. We're all a bit steeped in that. Many law firms – old and not so old – habitually construct offices to ref lect a traditional view of the profession. They're designed to underscore the firm's credibility and stability by being solid, ample and located at a prestigious address. They even seek to communicate the firm's power and significance through the size and look of the lobby. Nor is this nonsensical. What you're selling is, after all, intangible. Traditionally, a law firm's offices make the quality and success of what you do tangible – to your clients, your staff, to all your other stakeholders and to yourself. Arguably offices also matter to individual lawyers because they're still a status symbol. Lawyers know what they've achieved professionally from having their own office – its size and placement (hopefully on the corner) are used to reflect seniority and success and signal their place in the hierarchy. And let's not forget the practical value of offices. Lawyers don't just turn up, work and then go home. Offices are where people talk to each other and exchange information that progresses their work. As well, countless incidents of micro- communication happen. The inhabitants of offices hear and overhear things; they observe gestures; they can sense a mood; they regularly find out 'what's going on'. Colleagues continually communicate with each other non-verbally: with a smile, a grimace, a nod, a shrug. No one ever schedules a Zoom call to shrug. So the office is where team cohesion is built; where friendships, loyalty and belonging develop; and where the firm's wider culture is nurtured. These things aren't nothing, but what we have to reflect upon now is: What are they actually worth? Do they justify the often exorbitant cost of maintaining office space and can the benefits be replicated by other means? Finally, there's no evidence that there's a decline in productivity when people work from home. In fact, the opposite is the case. For instance economists Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), Jose Maria Barrero (Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico) and Steven J Davis (University of Chicago) surveyed 15,000 Americans over several waves of the pandemic, and concluded in a December 2020 paper 3 that post-pandemic working from home could raise productivity by as much as 2.4 per cent. This study quoted others that also reported rises in productivity, e.g. Bloom et al (2015) found a 13 per cent productivity uplift, Harrington (2020) an 8 per cent uplift and Choudhury et al. (2020) a 4 per cent productivity benefit. The pandemic, essentially a live experiment, has finally debunked the stereotype that home working is less productive and a concern for most organisations. This is the game changer. Actively rethinking the future What does it all mean for how we should evolve from here? To me it suggests that firms need to be actively reimagining how the future will look, and how they can reconfigure and reengineer the workplace. If you're not interested in making this effort, by the way, just know that it won't stop your competitors from doing so. 1 International Labour Organization's ILO Monitor: Covid-19 and the world of work at https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/ groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_740877.pdf 2 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 3 Why working from home will stick, see: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BFI_WP_2020174. pdf. This study quotes others which also report rises in productivity, e.g. Bloom et al (2015) finds a 13% productivity uplift; Harrington (2020) an 8% uplift and Choudhury et al. (2020) a 4% productivity benefit.

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