REMOTE LAW
feeling of disconnection which can affect job satisfaction, even though having fewer office- related distractions can boost productivity. “It is important to strike a balance and identify what works for each individual and provide the necessary digital tools for them to work effectively. Online video calls and other communication tools can help maintain a sense of involvement and facilitate collaboration and teamwork when people are not in the office.” On top of the potential isolation, Hargrove added that a work/life balance has to be struck, and one of the larger problems is the distractions that we can all experience. “Remote working may not suit everyone and it is important that employers respond to this by offering employees the choice to work from the office or remotely as far as possible. Sometimes a few distractions are a good thing, as a short break from the computer might be exactly what a person needs in order to refresh their mind and deliver their best work. Even when employees are working remotely, managers should encourage regular breaks.” Fakhouri said that distractions were one of his concerns, but said that he has added KPIs to remote workers, in order to introduce healthy competition as a motivation for productivity. “There is always the risk of being distracted from your work while at home. To avoid that being an issue, my office has implemented a set of KPIs to keep all staff accountable for their work. “Whether it is something as simple as the number of calls made in a week, to the number of medical records requested and received, I will know by the end of each week whether an employee has met their quotas. “More importantly, we keep our environment competitive by having a roundtable once per week to go through entire staff KPIs. After weeks of implementing this new structure, I have seen employees across By the very nature of the work that lawyers do, primarily over email, involving sensitive data, they are highly vulnerable to phishing attacks.
the adoption of cloud technologies and the ability to run activity audits. ”The byproduct of having data and user activity moving through cloud security tools means there’s an audit of what users are doing, not just the fact they’re active, but what they’re doing. “Whether lawyers are uploading, downloading, saving, or editing documents, law firms now have an audit of those transactions. As a result, the byproduct of cloud adoption isn’t just security, it’s full visibility of what users are doing.” That visibility the cloud affords firms is a key component to keeping the lights on because, as Lawrence Perret-Hall, Director, CYFOR Secure explains, “by the very nature of the work that lawyers do, primarily over email, involving sensitive data, they are highly vulnerable to phishing attacks. “The worry is that with many either working remotely or in a hybrid model, it’s possible that ‘bad’ security habits from home could commute into the office with lawyers. Phishing is particularly dangerous, allowing hackers to access an employee’s device and then pivot
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Lawrence Perret-Hall Director
straight into the corporate network. “Fortunately, there are a number of
cyfor.co.uk
solutions to enable safer working-from-home practices for legal services. The first step is to start with the basics: find out where the biggest vulnerability is. To do so, law firms need to conduct a cybersecurity audit to identify any gaps in security or weak points and allow time for proactive remediation before they are exploited by hackers. “A full cyber audit should include measures like vulnerability scanning and identification and actionable insights to allow legal firms to remediate issues where necessary and therefore bolster their security posture.” Wellbeing With so many audits going on, and a lot of scrutiny on behaviour, it might appear that legal firms are slowly morphing into a big brother-style working environment. Working from home practices has sparked a lot of innovative ideas, but throughout all the innovation, at the heart of much of the transition is an eye on employee health. While balancing the school run with some casework may sound ideal, fatigue hits us all, as Doug Hargrove, Managing Director of Legal at Advanced explains. “There are benefits to the social interaction and support that employees have in an office environment. Working alone can lead to a
Doug Hargrove Managing Director of Legal
oneadvanced.com
the board exceeding expectations.”
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