Lisa Stam
When Stam decided to act on her entrepreneurial instincts and start her own virtual law firm back in 2017, she was an outlier in the field.
"For most people in the legal profession at that time, there was this idea that you could only be a real law firm if you had a nice office to go to. I questioned that," Stam says. "When I started SpringLaw, the idea wasn't just to be a solo practitioner with a paperless practice. I wanted to build a fully integrated virtual law firm operating in the cloud."
Seven years and one pandemic later, few of Stam's clients or colleagues bat an eye when one of the firm's remote-working legal or administrative staff - including eight lawyers - request a video meeting to discuss a case.
"COVID forced everyone to go home, buy a webcam and figure it out," Stam says. "I think it's a wonderful development. It's not exactly the same as in person, but it's pretty close and it's way better than all the phone calls and emailing we used to do."
It's not just legal workplaces that have been shaken up by the rise of remote work. The collapse of the consensus around the necessity of an employee's physical presence in the office has left employers in almost every sector of the economy dealing with increasing demands for flexibility and exposed them to a whole new set of legal challenges.
"Of course, there are some people who have no choice but to be in person; you can't do brain surgery from home," she says. "But for any knowledge workers out there, we learned through COVID that a lot of their duties can be done remotely. The question then is, should it be done remotely? That's what we'll be exploring with owner-operators, employers and their [human resources] folks."
Among the hot topics that attendees will explore in Stam's online program are: the growing issue of moonlighting by remote employees; the resentments frequently generated in hybrid work environments; the duty to accommodate requests for remote work in the context of disability management; the best strategies in recruitment and retention; building strong and resilient teams; and ensuring data security, privacy and safety in remote settings.
"Those pre-COVID assumptions about the business case for working in person are gone and it's all become highly subjective," she says. "I'm not aware of any study that says that their sales went up because they pulled everyone back to the office. In fact, there may be some empirical evidence showing the opposite, but employers still feel differently and are sorting through those feelings."
While some commentators have suggested that the remote work versus in-office debate breaks down along generational lines, the reality is much more nuanced, according to Stam.
"It's not just baby boomers who want everybody in the office. There's a big mix of people who want to come in," she says. "Younger employees need opportunities to learn, meet people, get dressed up and go for drinks after work. It's healthy for them to have a demarcation between their student and professional lives."
To learn more about the Understanding the Legal Implications of Remote Work program or to register, visit the OsgoodePD website.
With files from OsgoodePD staff
This story was originally featured in YFile, York University's community newsletter.
