FEATURE
Pandemic Primes Law Departments for a New Normal By HILLARY MCNALLY
T
he Covid-19 pandemic has stress-tested the current operations of corporate law departments and legal professionals generally, placing increased pressure on the people, processes and technology needed to get the job done. Successful corporate law departments used the pandemic as a catalyst to think differently about how they approach work and support their organizations both during a crisis and moving
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forward. This is especially true of the challenges presented by remote work, which led to siloed workforces. The divisions between modern departments that were able to quickly pivot and acclimate to the unique challenges of the past year and traditional law departments that lost time trying to adapt to changing conditions have been vast. But the teams that remained steadfast throughout have come
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out stronger, with practices in place to carry them well into the future. All too often, legal teams are thought of as the department of “no.” Sometimes the phrase “I need to check with legal” translates to “bottleneck” in the collective mind of the C-suite. Despite that problem, forward-thinking teams have been able to use pandemic-related industry shifts to their advantage, re-branding not only the way legal is viewed by the business as a whole but also how the segments work together. Covid-19 acted as a bridge between general counsel and the broader business, enabling both to work more closely as a team. Moving forward, law departments must be intentional regarding communicating and collaborating with their business colleagues while continuing to map back to key business objectives. Although general counsel are frequently forced to be generalists — a role requiring smarts and savvy on topics often outside their purview — the pandemic took this mentality to the next level. No two crises are the same. The pandemic brought with it never before addressed legal questions and tossed unknowns into the mix every day. Virtual work also created new walls that needed to be torn down and new silos that BACK TO CONTENTS
