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What’s the new norm for someone who was already working remotely?
At 6:30 a.m., my alarm is going off—it’s another day trying to adjust to the new norm. My husband has transitioned to working from home, school is closed for the rest of the year, and my daughter is learning somewhat independently with worksheets and Zoom classes. Everyone is staying home today.
I’m sure this is a familiar story for so many of you. We are all adjusting to this new normal of social distancing, working from home, and homeschooling. But for me, my new norm is a little bit different. I’ve worked remotely for years as part of the LexisNexis® CounselLink® service team. That means my adjustment is sharing our home during the day when I’m used to having a home workspace all to myself.
Thankfully, I have a home office setup and I can shut myself away to check in with my CounselLink team and review our onboarding projects for the day. Our team has an average of nine years each of working on CounselLink so our work process is finely tuned and runs smoothly. Most of our communication and work is already done remotely. That’s why we are so comfortable with 100% remote implementations of CounselLink. Last year, our remote implementations made up more than 60% of our deals. We’re experts with the software and its functionality, and remote implementation is second nature at this point.
My first conversation that day was with a client who was looking for more visibility into his law firm’s overall workload. Now that his firm is also working remotely and taking the same precautions as others across the nation, he decided it was even more important to be able to manage, track, and report on all activities using a single solution. But he wasn’t sure how we were going to get the software implemented with no one in the office. It’s great when we’re able to reassure customers that implementations can be done completely remote. Plus, it saves on travel and expense costs, not to mention the time savings of scheduling and the act of traveling.
My second call of the day was with a client who was overwhelmed with legal operations responsibilities since the COVID-19 crisis. Several of their employees were reassigned to other work in the organization and she was solely running the operational side of the house. She signed up for a Professional Services Plan (PSP) so my team could support her through all her tasks and special projects, all from the comfort of our home offices. We decided to use her hours to back her up on specific legal operations tasks, analyze data to help make better decisions on their outside counsel rates and fee agreements, and temporarily revamp their workflows until they had a full set of staff again.
Whether you’re new to working from home or have worked remotely for years, having your spouse, partner, or kids in your workspace full time can be an adjustment. Here are three tips I use that may help you, too:
- Carve out space and make it your own—no matter how big or small.
- Head outside at least once a day for that vitamin D, even if you need to bring your laptop with you.
- Give yourself (and others) some grace, and be flexible with your work and family schedules.
For many people, it may take some adjustment to transition your daily work environment from the office to your home. Trying to keep up with matters, billing, operational data, and a whole lot more from home or via a remote desktop can be challenging for those whose normal routines are working in an office environment. But having the right enterprise legal management solution takes away those challenges and helps make managing your day-to-day legal operations simple and easy. With CounselLink, you get all the benefits of an enterprise legal management solution from a team you can count on, delivered right to your computer—at home.
You can find lots of resources to help with business continuity and tips for remote work during the COVID-19 crisis at our Managing Change Resource Center.
Kelley has worked for LexisNexis since 2006, starting with the CounselLink Account Management team. She has a several awards, most notably Consultant of the year in 2016. Now today, she manages our Business Consultant team in the Professional Services Organization, providing leadership and direction, supporting revenue goals and optimizing processes to better meet our customer’s needs. Prior to joining LexisNexis, Kelley spent time in the advertising and marketing fields, including working for a non-profit golf organization for kids.