P2P

A s we're all returning to the office, a new reality is dawning on legal IT departments across the world: this is going to be hard. It was actually easier when everyone was remote – at least we knew where they were. But we are heading to hybrid and that is an even bigger challenge. We asked over 100 firms at a recent ILTA webinar about their plans in returning to the office. What we found was a lot of flexibility: • A majority of firms plan on a hybrid approach, mixing office and remote work (52%) • Many are focusing on being back in the office while allowing more flexibility (29%) • A smaller number of firms are going back exclusively to the office (7%) or going completely virtual (3%) or having staff full-time in the office with attorney's hybrid (9%). Appending this to the conversations we are having with several firms, a clear pattern emerges: • The larger the firm, and the larger the city a particular office is in, the more likely they are looking at reducing their office space footprint and enabling a hybrid work environment. • Smaller firms in secondary markets are the most likely to be focused on being back in the office most of the time. But even in that case, we have proven that remote work does in fact work, and so there is still a newfound openness to more flexibility. It was amazing how quickly legal IT professionals enabled their firms to go remote. Now, what we're seeing with attorneys and staff returning to the office is an expectation of the same level of automation and technolog y infrastructure to which they have long been accustomed, but with the extra wrinkle of a hybrid work environment. Welcome to the new #WorkFromAnywhere reality! Work The Same From Anywhere To make that happen, it's necessary to extend the firm's infrastructure so that is applies whether you're in the office, working at home, at a client's office or anywhere else. What we really need is to move beyond Work From Anywhere to Work The Same From Anywhere. Digital Mailroom The delivery of mail is a great example and implementing a digital mailroom is the perfect example of "Why haven't we always done it this way?" It's a much better solution than pushing the cart down the hall and does not matter 39 I L T A N E T . O R G "What we really need is to move beyond Work From Anywhere to Work The Same From Anywhere."

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