8CIOReview | | OCTOBER 2021Prior to the pandemic, there was a strong presumption that most law firm administrative and business services jobs needed to be performed in the office, requiring in-person supervision. That beliefhas been severely tested and, in my opinion, shattered by the experience of the last five months of our work from home (WHF) environment. How is it possible that this long-standing, strongly held belief has been so thoroughly rebuffed?I think a number of factorshave led to the success of WFH, many of which have important implications for the future of administrative and business services support for law firms and other professional services firms.Keys to Our Success· Rock-solid IT infrastructure. Literally overnight, we moved to a WFH environment, meaning that instead of working from 14 offices, we were working from about 1,100 home offices. We tested as never before our IT hardware and software, particularly our server capacity, cyber security, and email and video capabilities, and these critical elements were clearly up to the challenge. We had the right hardware and software required to continue operating with almost no hiccups.A good illustration of our readiness is our Administrative Hub in Minneapolis. We designed the Hub to support mobile working, enabling people to move from their workstations to breakout rooms or treadmill desks in the Hub seamlessly; as a result, moving from the Hub to home was relatively easy. In addition to the basic infrastructure, we made the decision to provide our employees with the equipment they needed to outfit their home offices. We shipped equipment, including extra monitors, docking stations, and other tools to them on an as-needed basis so that they could work as efficiently as they hadwhile in the office. We also added to the firm's help desk capability; new software and training improved the help desk experience for our users. Our objective was to removeas many barriers to productivity as possible so that our client service remained exceptional. · Strong supervisory capabilities. We had not intentionally designed our business services and administrative teams for a 100% WFH environment, but we had in place key operational elements that enabled us to transition quickly. Many of our senior leaders located in other parts of the country had TECHNOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP COMBINE TO POWER LAW FIRMS THROUGH AND BEYOND THE PANDEMICBy Daniel Lasman, CFO, Fish & RichardsonIN MY OPINION
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