Biglaw Firm May Never Go Back To One Of Its Offices Full Time Thanks To COVID Lockdown Rules

We suspect many more firms may soon come to the same realization.

onOctober 29, 2020 at 1:00 PM

What with the rollback of the majority of its coronavirus crisis austerity measures, Biglaw may have thought it was done with COVID-19, but COVID-19 is far from done with Biglaw. The pandemic continues to rage across the globe and things are only getting worse, with certain countries already reinstituting regional lockdowns. Take, for example, what’s currently going on in Ireland. The situation has gotten so bad, so quickly, that the country has moved into the highest level of its COVID-19 restrictions, imposing a six-week shutdown in an effort to flatten the curve as cases continue to rise. More than 100,000 jobs are expected to be lost in mere days.

Given recent events, Eversheds Sutherland — an international firm that comes in at No. 35 on the Global 200 rankings — isn’t sure that there will ever be a full return to employees working full time in its Irish offices in Belfast and Dublin. Law.com International has a statement from the firm:

An Eversheds spokesperson said the firm is “very well placed to once again acclimatise to remote working” following its long-term focus on technology, but does not “envisage there will ever be a full return to the office”.

The firm has “established ‘operational groups’, leveraging the expertise of our colleagues across the world, to plan for the future of our working environment”.

“We are confident that the measures we have put in place will equip our people to meet the demands of the new normal working environment”, the spokesperson added.

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Biglaw firms will be doing even more remote working as we inch toward 2021. Let’s hope things improve when it comes to COVID containment in the months to come.

Eversheds May Never Return To Full Time Office Work in Ireland [Law.com International]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.