By Ryan Boysen

Law360 (January 4, 2021, 12:02 AM EST) -- Just as law firm leaders are massaging their temples and coming to grips with the past year, 2021 is upon us, bringing new challenges like managing pandemic fatigue, facing down a recession and grappling with the idea that there may never be a complete return to normal.

The last 12 months have been a lot to handle. From a pandemic that led to unprecedented lockdowns, to the largest protest movement in U.S. history, to one of the most divisive presidential elections in the modern era, 2020 upended nearly every aspect of American life, and the legal industry was no exception.

Law360 spoke with five law firm leaders who said that while 2020 was surprisingly kind to their firms' bottom lines, it nonetheless left them with a strange feeling of vertigo and whiplash as they continue to struggle with adapting to pandemic- and protest-induced challenges, all while trying to capitalize on opportunities created by the upheaval of the last year.

"Even though we feel like the end is in sight, the pandemic has thrown us so many curves that I'm a bit wary of the light on the horizon," said Ira Coleman, the chairman of McDermott Will & Emery LLP. "It could be sunshine, or it could be a train bearing down on us."

Pandemic Fatigue

Most of the law firm leaders said their attorneys initially did a great job of buckling down and learning how to work remotely, but they worry about the long-term impact of working from home if the pandemic stretches on until summer or later.

"During the first part of 2021, my primary concern is pandemic fatigue," said John Adkisson, CEO of Fish & Richardson PC. "As we go into month 11, 12, 13 and so on of this pandemic, I worry that being cooped up at home and caring for kids or family members, whatever it may be, will begin to affect our attorneys' well-being."

Adkisson and others said their firms have rolled out programs like mindfulness coaching and resiliency training along with Zoom happy hours and other initiatives to help their attorneys stay strong and engaged with colleagues. But many said it's still unclear whether those measures are full-on solutions or just band-aids.

J. Tracy Walker, the managing partner of McGuireWoods LLP, said that early on, his firm experienced a "productivity bump" in the wake of the forced digitization of workflow spurred by the pandemic. He is not sure how long that will last though, and he worries that happiness, creativity and client relationships might suffer the longer his lawyers aren't able to collaborate in person at the office.

"The cultural aspects of working together are very important," Walker said. "I don't think you can completely replicate that over the long term by working remotely."

Law firm leaders said they are particularly worried about how new associates will cope with working remotely and other pandemic measures.

Partners and senior associates already knew their colleagues, the culture of their firm, and enough about the practice of law to shift relatively easily to working from home, law firm leaders said. But new associates just out of law school don't have any of those advantages, and their workload is as heavy as ever despite the pandemic.

"No doubt this has been very hard for new associates," said McDermott's Coleman. "We're an apprenticeship business. Usually on any given day, I'd be going to lunch with my partners and someone would bring a new associate, and I'd share firm folklore stories and get to know them that way."

"Those silly happenstance moments are part of the glue that binds the firm together," Coleman added. "And that's how associates learn too, sitting across the desk from a partner and asking questions."

Walker said McGuireWoods' newest batch of associates has still been coming into the office a few days a week for the most part, but it has nonetheless been a challenge to get them the face time with partners they need to grow as lawyers.

Jim Lehman, the managing partner of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, said making sure associates get the experience and support they need until they can fully return to the office is one of the biggest challenges he is grappling with now.

"Working remotely, they don't have the same opportunities to discuss problems and learn how to solve them," Lehman said. "It's just a very different environment to develop those skills in."

Return to Normal, or Permanent Revolution?

Even as they pine for a return to the good old days, law firm leaders said that actually managing a full-scale return to the office won't be easy. Some said they are beset by a nagging feeling that the world and the legal industry have been forever altered by 2020, and that there's no going back.

That means the next year could be a major opportunity to lock in workflow changes to prepare their firms for the future, but the optimism of that outlook is tempered by the fear of not getting it just right.

"Honestly, my biggest fear right now is squandering this opportunity to drive permanent change across the entire firm," said Elliott Portnoy, the CEO of Dentons. "We don't believe the legal business is going back to normal, and we think this is an incredible opportunity to begin working in a more dynamic fashion."

Even though many of Dentons' offices were relatively unscathed by the COVID-19 pandemic because they were in countries where the virus was more contained early on, Portnoy said hundreds of his attorneys were still forced to rapidly adapt to remote work, just as happened at other firms.

Portnoy said he is fully committed to the digitization spurred by the pandemic, but that the firm is still experimenting with how best to support lawyers during that shift.

"Zoom fatigue is a very real thing," Portnoy said. "We certainly share the view that the resilience of our people is being severely tested. This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, and striking the right balance is incredibly important."

At the same time, Coleman of McDermott said he's worried about the pendulum swinging too far toward permanent remote work once a vaccine is available and a return to the office is finally possible.

"There's going to be a lot of associates and partners saying, 'Hey, this pandemic was terrible, but the silver lining is that I can work from anywhere now. So I'm going to Mexico now,'" Coleman said. "That's going to be a tough one to navigate."

Adkisson of Fish & Richardson said that whatever form it ultimately takes, planning the reintegration process is going to be a painstaking endeavor that is sure to add to his stress levels this year.

"It's going to be very challenging," Adkisson said. "Who will have the vaccine? How do we integrate those attorneys along with ones who don't have the vaccine? Who is still most at risk? Those are all questions we'll have to answer as we start bringing people back."

Besides the pandemic, law firm leaders said they're also still thinking about the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the nation after the May police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, putting a renewed spotlight on the lack of diversity within the legal industry.

Dentons' Portnoy said a failure to internalize the lessons of that movement could be just as damaging as a failure to learn from the pandemic.

"I'm very concerned that if we don't take an aggressive, concrete set of actions in 2021 we will miss an opportunity to materially improve working conditions for women and racially underrepresented groups," Portnoy said. "The threat to our business of not being more diverse is a very real one."

McGuireWoods' Walker expressed a similar sentiment.

"The renewed focus on racial injustice caused by the pain of these past few months is particularly important for lawyers," Walker said. "Not only because we have an important role in the broader community, but because our profession is not as diverse as it should be."

"So we're doubling down on the programs we had in place to address this, and I think in 2021 it will be very important to keep our focus on that and not let it be just a passing fad," he added.

Recession Ahead?

While the worst fears of an all-out pandemic-fueled recession never came to pass in 2020 thanks to a surprisingly resilient stock market and widespread governmental financial intervention, some law firm leaders are still worried that COVID-19 will catch up with the economy in the year ahead.

That could be bad for business, and even if law firms are somewhat insulated from the worst effects of a recession, it would still make an already unusual year even harder to plan for.

"There's definitely a lot of uncertainty," said Coleman of McDermott. "Even before the pandemic we were in the 11th year of a six-year economic cycle, so it just seems like a matter of time before something's got to give there."

"If a recession does happen and that's coupled with travel, hospitality and other industries that are still reeling from the pandemic, what does that look like?" he added.

Lehman of Nelson Mullins shares those worries.

"Looking around, you just have to believe that eventually we're going to have a recession," he said. "Eventually, the fiscal stimulus will come to a halt and all these small businesses that have gone under will start to ripple through the economy. We may have postponed a recession, but the threat hasn't gone away."

However, Walker said he's optimistic that the American economy will avoid another deep recession like the one that hit in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

"Law firms in general did very well in 2020. Demand has been strong, and I think the economy continues to rebound," he said. "So I believe there's a lot of reason to be optimistic about 2021."

Adkisson said Fish & Richardson is particularly well-insulated from recessions because it is a boutique that focuses solely on writing and litigating patents. But even so, he's not convinced a recession is coming in 2021 one way or the other.

"Last year was the best year ever for writing patents," Adkisson said. "We haven't seen any signs of that slowing down."

--Editing by Jill Coffey and Alanna Weissman.

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