November 2020:
As with companies across the world, the lockdown shifted office hours into a new ‘working from home’ strategy.
For an established law firm, with years of protocol inviting clients into the office to meet with lawyers, this new way of working initially caused some concern.
“Overnight, we went to working from home – clients could no longer come into our offices,” Chris remembered of the early days of lockdown.
“There was a massive fear factor during March, April and May about how that was going to pan out.”
Fortunately, thanks to a hot desking strategy in the offices, the move to working from home worked well.
“We didn’t know we were [ready to work from home], but we were,” Chris explained.
“The investments we made in IT, which made sure that everyone could work at any desk in any office at any time and could log on at home if they wanted to, had a huge impact.”
“We were very much a business where everyone still came into the office, but people took the key tools of their desk at work and took it home, and your first place of work became your home.”
Initially, there was some discussion around monitoring staff as they were working from home.
“[There was talk of] having people register when they’re in in the morning, but it felt quite embarrassing,” Chris said.
“There was an idea that everyone emailed in saying ‘yes, I’m here, I’m working’, but you’re not going to follow them all day. It became apparent that those who were very busy were doing more than they’d ever done, and if you had teams that weren’t that busy, what’s the point in getting on their back?”
Chris said that the partners recognised early on that staff working from home were adapting their office hours around their home life, with some logging on to work earlier, pausing to manage home schooling, before returning to work later in the evenings.
In the end, it was decided that line managers should take the time to drop in with staff to ensure work was being done to deadlines, but Chris says now that they need not have worried.
“The pandemic came, and performance just improved. There was less distraction, fewer issues with dynamics, so [the staff] got more done by being completely unsupervised.”
December 2020:
When we caught up with Chris in December, it appeared that the move to working from home was becoming a long-term shift as opposed to merely a coronavirus response.
“We’ve done a survey for all staff with an independent consultant, to find out about working from home, how it’s been and how people want to work post pandemic,” he explained.
“We’ve not had the results yet, but I’m sure we’ll get what many other law firms will get, which is 20 per cent want to be [in the office] all the time, 20 per cent want to be at home all the time, 60 per cent probably see themselves doing three days in and two days from home. I’m in that crowd as well.”
However, Chris and the other partners have recognised that not everyone’s job translates so well to a working from home set-up.
“We’re feeling very relaxed that a lot of people can work well from home, but there are a few people where their jobs haven’t worked as well from home, and then there’s people whose job can only be done in the office, such as front of house.”
When the time comes, these members of staff will be encouraged to return to their offices in a safe and secure way.
Reflecting on the changes, Chris admits that the pandemic probably just accelerated plans that the firm would have eventually made.
“In three months, we’ve made changes that might have taken three years at the pace we were going at before,” he mused.
“We talked about agile working and we accepted that if you worked, you wouldn’t necessarily be in the office. Last year, we employed a lawyer who will never work in the office [as she’s based two hours away.] She’s been in our offices twice and she’s been with us a year.”
Just before the pandemic came into effect, Slater Heelis were looking at signing a lease for a large office space, but this move was cancelled considering the shift to working from home.
“We were going to go into one very big building which we cancelled, and now we’re looking at occupying another unit where we are now,” Chris explained.
“[The new space] will work really well as we’ll have a mixture of agile and people who work in the office all the time.”
In terms of the work done by the firm, Chris says the lockdown and the need to move court hearings online has also worked well for the company.
He referred in particular to a recent meeting that involved himself, a client in Cheshire and a barrister in Leeds, all of which was done via video chat.
“An hour and a half conference worked [perfectly well over Zoom]. In the old days, that would be me and the client going up to Leeds to see the barrister. That’s probably two hours’ travel, probably over two and a half hours in the conference because once you’re there you tend to keep going, whereas on a call it’s easier to keep moving.”
He says shifts like this have saved the firm both time and money.
“I certainly won’t go back to what we did in the old days.”
Leadership 
