I founded Obelisk Support, the flexible legal service provider, almost ten years ago, driven by my belief that too much legal talent was going to waste because of antiquated working practices across the legal sector - long working hours, concentrating on face time as opposed to a focus on output and delivery and generally a perception that all who needed to work in a different way were somehow not pulling their weight and adding value.
I started Obelisk as the financial crisis of 2008 was still casting a large shadow across the business world and businesses were looking for cost savings and innovative services. Last year we looked at some of the challenges faced by law firms and how
cultural change
and innovative working practices could be the answer. We then started to research how the pressures and practices of major in-house legal teams compare. Written before any of us had any idea how Covid-19 was going to impact on our working and personal lives, our new report,
Built to Last?
identifies five pillars of action we believe are essential for in-house legal leaders to pursue in order to take advantage of changes in the legal industry and thrive as a function in the long-term.
Over the past weeks, global businesses have been brought face-to-face with a far greater existential threat than we could have imagined. Suddenly the working lives of hundreds of thousands of lawyers around the world have changed beyond recognition as lockdown after lockdown has been announced. Far from being restricted to the few, almost 100% of legal activity in the UK is now being delivered via lawyers working remotely. Those companies who have already embraced technological innovation, flexible and remote working practices and remote legal services are ahead of the game. The rest of the industry is grappling with the pressures of delivering their Covid-19 response whilst navigating unfamiliar policies and working conditions.
None of us can know right now where we will be in six months’ time, let alone in the longer term. However, the pressure on costs, the volume of different risks in-house teams have to manage and the expectations from the rest of the business have all increased dramatically as businesses large and small try to find their way through a global economy operating in circumstances on a par with WWII. Given the pace of events, teams are having to make decisions and provide advice in uncomfortably short timescales. As a resource for commercial colleagues, in-house counsel have never been more in demand. Equally, the need for in-house legal leaders to nurture resilience in their teams, to protect colleagues’ mental and physical well-being and to optimise the way work gets done has never been greater, especially as many organisations enact emergency pay cuts and hiring freezes.
Once the immediate shock of current events dulls and a new normal emerges, I can see a way for our industry to move forward with some of the old prejudices against non-traditional ways of working laid to rest. We have been forced to see how our systems and practices behave without the spaces and structures of office life. In the main, our industry is doing an outstanding job in the most difficult of circumstances. Imagine how well remote and flexible working can work without the necessary limitations of nationwide lockdown. “I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape” says Charles Dickens’ Estella in Great Expectations. I hope the thinking we offer in
our latest report
can play a small part in helping legal leaders define that better shape of things to come, and that we collectively are not too bent and broken by this crisis to seize the opportunity to think differently and make lasting positive changes that it offers us.
