P2P

27 I L T A N E T . O R G During the first wave of the global pandemic, the International Labour Organization calculated that more than four in five of the world's entire workforce was affected by lockdowns and stay at home measures. To reiterate, that represented nearly 2.7 billion displaced workers. The fall- out from the pandemic was huge. As such, this was not technically a Black Swan event – defined as ''a surprise that has a major effect'' – since in fact a global pandemic was long-predicted by disaster- scenario modellers and the like. Notwithstanding, that did nothing to minimize its severity. Over a protracted period of time, and like a classic Black Swan, we've experienced a widespread impact. Not least, we've undergone profound disruptions to our personal and professional lives – which became increasingly intertwined. Moreover the extent and level of this disruption may have changed the world of work for good. We all hope that in 2021 Covid-19 is remedied by science, and that the world can move on. But I'm being careful not to say recover', because that implies going back to where we once were. Rather, I think we need to fully analyse and understand what's happened and its ramifications. Thereafter we need to proactively evolve in response to a changed professional world. Extended wires It seems to me that when the pandemic hit – hard and suddenly – the first response stage in most law firms can reasonably be described as 'survival mode'. Firms needed to ensure that they enabled work to continue by any means to ensure service deliverability and maintain a revenue stream. Depending on the firm's level of preparedness, this usually involved more or less scrambling to put in place what I'm going to call 'extended wires'. This simply means that firms extended their internal network to facilitate home working and in some cases I even heard of firms loading computers and office chairs into vans and sending them out to their employees' homes. This is a remote working model, wherein the firm is still hosting applications on its own servers, resources are displaced, and lawyers and staff are still logging on, likely using a VPN link that provides access to applications and data just as if they were in the office. It's 'remote working' because people are working remotely from a hub. So the firm's IT network is extended, but essentially unaltered. The empty office Then the pandemic subsided somewhat, only to surge back again, and again. At time of writing, while a clinically approved vaccination is already being administered in several parts of the world, the global peak in daily new case numbers that was seen in April 2020 at around 98,000 was considerably exceeded in July (295,000) and dwarfed by the surge seen in December 2020 (737,000). 2 I don't quote these numbers to emphasize the extent of the pandemic, but rather its protraction. This thing has simply gone on so long that we've become used to it. In that over-used phrase, it has indeed become 'the new normal'. As a result, we're now long past the scrambling to survive phase, and are at a point at which we can take stock. I therefore urge every law practice to have a long think about "The Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated in terms of intensity and expanded its global reach. Full or partial lockdown measures are now affecting almost 2.7 billion workers, representing around 81 percent of the world's workforce." — ILO Monitor, 7 April 20201

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