Building a “Post-COVID” Practice | SMP A Legal Podcast
Swainson Miki Peskett LLP Partners, Jordan W. Smith, Ryan C. Kemp, and Graeme R. Swainson discuss building a “post-COVID” practice. As the world navigates the realities of “post-pandemic” life, it’s essential to reassess how you practice law. Get tips on how to evaluate your current legal practices and set up systems for success.
SMP | A Legal Podcast is a business first legal podcast discussing trending legal topics with the occasional help of top industry professionals. SMP | A Legal Podcast is hosted by 3 of Swainson Miki Peskett LLP’s partners, Jordan W. Smith, Ryan C. Kemp, and Graeme R. Swainson.
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Transcription
Graeme R. Swainson
“Welcome back to SMP A legal Podcast. My name is Graeme Swainson. As always, I’m joined by my colleagues, Jordan Smith.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Hey, Graeme.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“and Ryan Kemp.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Gents. How we doing?”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Doing pretty well.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Can’t complain. It’s sunny outside. You know, springs right around the corner.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“We’re having a great day. We’ve got a great topic today. We’re going to talk about, you know, a topic that we’ve frankly, I think avoided for a little bit. You know, we’re here in March of 2023 and it’s tough to avoid this topic. So, we’re going to talk about practicing law in a “post-COVID” world. We are not going to make any, you know, scientific arguments in this podcast. We’re not going to talk about whether COVID has pass us or not. Again, respect everyone’s opinions on that. But what’s indisputable, I think, guys, is that we are returning to a sense of what we were looking at in, you know, 2019, a bit more normalcy as far as just working in our office. You know, return to work is a very trendy topic right now. Let’s get into it. So, Jordan, three years ago about the world got turned upside down and all of our lives along with it. So, what’s kind of changed for you in the last few years? How’s your day-to-day just practicing law, different than it was, this time, three years ago?”
Jordan W. Smith
“Uh, wow. That’s kind of a, that’s a big question. Cause, loaded question. It is, as is my custom, I will try to answer. The question may not answer the question you asked but no, I’ll try. I’ll try to answer the question. For me, I mean, when this all happened, you know, finding myself at home with kids, young kids, dealing with them out of school, dealing with, and I mean, a lot of, I mean, a lot of people are in this boat, trying to get my work done at very uncertain times. Not sure, what impact, the economy will have, of course, on Law work and everything else. A very, kind of insecure time. And then thinking about it as it happens, I guess it wasn’t bright enough to think of this prior to that, us starting here, but we’re looking at just about three years here now. I mean, so this is, when I think about it, you know, we’re right around that and it was extremely difficult practicing, I’d say for the first six months at the start of the pandemic. Especially with the kids and school. It was the lockdown days, the lockdown. It was, it was terrible. It was horrible. Um, and of course, I think part of it too is, you know, obviously it was business lawyers where our, our business clients are wanting obviously advice and guidance on things and there just wasn’t, I mean, it was just such an uncertain time in so many different ways, including, quite candidly, a lot of service-based businesses carrying employees and not. What to do and prior to the government program stepping up and everything else. So when I think of, you know, at a high level, what it was like then and, and compared to now, it’s night and day, different than it was at the beginning of it. But if I think of, you know, not in the throes of it, but kind of pre-pandemic to now, it’s kind of a hybrid. It’s changed. It’s not what it was but it’s quite a bit different than of course, if we’re talking three years ago today. And so, I’m finding, you know, things, for example, I do have clients that will want to have virtual meetings still. But it’s really all over the board because I do, but then I, of course, have other clients who like, just, they’re like, they want to meet in person. It doesn’t matter. And I’m not saying they’re happy to come to drive downtown. That might be an overstatement, but they want to do lunch. They’re so, I am finding coming out of this that I’m extremely busy. I’m busy with work, but I’m also just busy and I love doing this. It’s fine, I love it, but I’m just busy with meeting people. And I find that clients are very eager to meet. I don’t know, Ryan, what has your experience been?”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Yeah, I mean, I think without a doubt people are more, there’s more of a zest and a zeal to get out and socialize with people face to face. Certainly, you know, in the real estate industry specifically, there historically has been a ton of opportunity to get out and see people and network and do all those type of things. And certainly in some of the larger, you know, the form events that’s we’ve attended over the last, I don’t know, six to eight months, we’ll call it, there’s definitely, I think a heightened buzz. To interact face to face, to get to, to get together with people again. So from that perspective, it sort of re-energize it because certainly pre-pandemic, while those things were enjoyable. You know, they, it is, I mean, it is work and it did, you did get tired of it. If you did enough of it now, I think again. It’s just a funner, it’s more, a more enjoyable atmosphere to be in, in situations like that. Cause everybody is more, you know, everybody’s happier to be there. I find people were starved for socialization there for a while.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah. It’s been nice to get back to that. But yeah, I share your guys’ sentiments. It’s funny what I think about, when I’m thinking about how things have changed in the last three years, what it kind of gets to, to me is that there was kind of some forced in. Right, I think, Jordan, to your point, I think we’re getting back to a point where it’s a little bit more “normal” as far as how it was kind of pre-pandemic, but also, there’s been a bunch of stuff that we’ve kind of taken and, you know, we were forced into it, but then we quickly learned, oh this actually. Uh again, I think back again three years ago, to March 2020 and thinking about, for lack of a better term, that mad scramble to get everyone set up to, work from home. Because I think, and I’ll call us out, the legal industry in general, I think was probably one of the most unprepared industries for this. Again, we’ve very paper heavy, we’re very reliant on people physically being in the office, to move paper around to move money around. Again, it wasn’t a very friendly industry for working remotely. And so it was a bit of a big scramble I remember to get everyone set up. Work from home to be able to, you know, move money from remote locations as far as wiring, and all that stuff. You know, getting things like a cheque requisition. Just getting a bill paid. It was more difficult to, you know, you had to dust off your old printer scanner at home and do it that way. And so for us, I know it was, it was forced innovation. We were forced to get everyone set up to work at home remotely and get all of those systems in place. Then we quickly realized I guess I don’t have to physically be in the office to approve a wire, I don’t have to physically be in the office to even meet with clients or get this file advanced. And so, I’ve enjoyed it because as much as I love being in the office, as much as I love collaborating with people face to face, the “forced innovation” that we’ve done has made everything a little bit more efficient in the industry, which I’ve quite enjoyed.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“What is a better example of that than teams meetings? Teams meetings and Zoom. And I know I’ve kind of gone back and forth on this and I’d probably say late ’21 to early ’22, the thought of another Teams meeting made me green almost. But since then, the opportunity to meet with clients in person and get a good mix, I mean, in a lot of circumstances, especially if you’ve got clients obviously in other cities, other locations, a Teams meeting is a powerful, is a really powerful tool. And something that I think is certainly here to stay. And I don’t know if you would include this in the basket of forced innovation mercifully even, legislature was able to move, relatively rapidly in making some legislative changes. That made, getting documents signed, in registrable form made that quite a bit easier, acknowledging the fact that you weren’t going to be able to sit around a table and get things signed like you did that you know that you were pre-pandemic. But with the realization that, yeah, I can sit on a video conference call with someone and properly identify them and witness their signature and yeah, we can do it, a rarity probably on this podcast but, yeah, kudos to our provincial government there for getting that done really quick to make our lives a lot easier at the time. And another thing, you know, I know historically, you could say, well, you could phone in by teleconference and, much the same, pre-pandemic, which is true to a certain extent but, obviously the big thing that, that you lose, or that you gain rather with having a teams or video conferences being able to pick up on nonverbal cues. Yeah. Like, that’s obviously important, an important piece of the message that’s lost with the old conventional teleconference. So again, Teams meeting forced innovation. I mean, obviously the technology was there, pre-pandemic, but finding a new and novel way to use it to fit into our practices, I think that was a big plus.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Yeah. Well, I was going to say, one of the other things I think is, uh, I think there might have been a fear. I didn’t personally have this fear, because I have a high level of trust with the people we work with but I think you can see, generally speaking, if we’re talking about what it’s in our industry is, I think there would be a level of concern. Maybe fear is a bit strong, but certainly a level of concern that, well, that person really going to work at home. I mean, is this really going to happen? And I think there’s a benefit to that, which is you, you really do need to trust the people you work with. I mean, and you know, and part of that’s obviously, you know, vetting and obviously hiring people, trading them properly, everything else.But, I will say that I think there, you know, and I can say what I’ve, you know, been at, I was at a legal conference in Boston, now it’s got to be nine months ago. And I remember that was a topic of conversation and, you know, it was thought that, generally speaking, everybody performed pretty well. Like, you know, I think the staff and lawyers at these firms, you know, they did the work at home, whether they’re at home or or work. They actually did the work. Yeah, the work was.. Well, I think one of the gaps in all of that though, frankly, is some of the younger lawyers or the younger staff or paralegals, that’s a very challenging time. And of course, I’m not in that demographic as you can see from my white, gray hair. But, you know, I think it is a challenging time or has been a challenging time. People starting their career during this pandemic. And I mean, here we’ve done our best or we did our best to bridge that. And of course we were in the office probably earlier than most. But I think for those that had an extended period of time at work, I think it had to be extremely challenging.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah. So, let’s dive into that. Uh, let’s talk about the return to work, remote working versus in-person or a hybrid model. Again, I think we have our opinions on this. Uh, you know, Ryan, I’ll start with you. Kind of what have you seen? Again, this is something we constantly have clients talking to us about. How do you guys feel about this? Uh, what’s your advice? Uh, so on and so forth. Uh, you know, Ryan, I’ll open it up to you because I know we all have kind of thoughts on this.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Well, going back to your comment regarding force innovation. I mean, we made the conscious decision to set our people up with the hardware that would allow them to work. So long as you have an internet connection, regardless of your location and if you can offer that option for your people, like to me, that’s just a total, it just makes perfect sense. Like why wouldn’t you make that offer you? Offer that to your people who you have the capability to do that. So, we were able to make that, you know, we were able to make pivot. And then when we felt the timing was right, of course, you know, we conveyed a message to our people that we thought made sense for our particular line of work and our particular business. Now, this is one of those things where I think the market is going to really dictate. I mean, you can tell yourself, you have, you know, you can make whatever choice you want on a spectrum to being essentially mandated full back, all the time, or remote all the time. The market is really going to dictate, I think, where you’ll land to a certain event. You know, personally, I still advocate again, and this is specific to our business, I advocate for people in a communal space a majority of the time. But having said that, I have a dentist appointment or I’m getting the oil changed or what have you. Having the ability to work from home, whether it’s a day or week or whatever that is having a little bit of a mixture, I do think is a positive development and something that obviously is here and will likely be here for the foreseeable future. So I think the, it’s not going to be a one size fits all for businesses. You’re going to have to take a look at your specific situation and again, the labour market that you’re faced with. I think for us, we may be a little bit more bullish on back to the office than some. But again, That’s the decision that we’ve made based on the group that we have and what we think our needs are. So, I don’t know if there’s one right answer, but certainly, you know, again, a little bit of a mix I think is good for people generally.”
Jordan W. Smith
“No, I agree. I mean, before when I was speaking about, depending on where you’re at in your career, it’s interesting because I guess, and to your point, Ryan, it’s obvious to say, but you know, consider the business you’re in. Consider the, if we’re looking at our industry, considering the firm you’re in and the makeup of your firm, the market that you firms functions in. All those things inform, of course. But the choices, I mean, some of this too is, I mean the labour market, you know, has been tight, I think through the pandemic, firms actually were quite busy. Which maybe at the very beginning it was a bit uncertain, but I think it’s well known that law firms did quite well during the pandemic, and part of that is they did have a lot of work. I mean, frankly, had a lot less expenses. There’s a lot less flying around. There’s less client, there’s no client promo. And I know staffing, the labour market was tight and salaries kind of, commensurate with that. They kind of go up and then you’re in a position where, you’re having to, you’ve worked under a certain premise and now you’re trying to navigate how to deal with that and not feel like you’re taking something away. And so there’s all of those things to consider. I think with us, one of the things that you know is easier for us is we’re a firm where we work very closely together anyways. We know each other very well. And, you know, I think for us, the mentorship aspect that we have, it was very important that we ensure that continues. To the point of being a someone starting your career, I found it very difficult working on files with lawyer or para staff that are just starting. It was very challenging and doing it remotely and the emails I got, so one of the things and this is also about what’s changed, is I get way more emails than I used to get. Way more, way more hundreds and hundreds of emails. Especially from younger lawyers and walking an office or two over or across the hall and just talking to somebody, you can talk about five files in five minutes and maybe even socialize for a few minutes. And hey, you know, yeah. What did you do last night? What’s happening? There’s all that personal connection and what I can say is that was huge. It’s still that. Completely. And I, for me it’s one of those things where I missed that during the early stages of the pandemic. It was difficult. It’s back to more of what it was, but not a hundred percent. And part of being in the office and our choice to do it, I think, frankly, was because of that.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Just one thing, if I may jump in. Yes, that it’s I think it’s interesting that you say that the difficulties that you experienced and being a senior practitioner. And the comment that I was going to make is, I think the work remotely thing, like that concept, I think means different things to different people and it impacts people differently depending on your level of seniority and your comfort level and whatever you’re doing. So I think for somebody like yourself, Jordan working remotely from home would be easier in the sense that you know, you’re more skilled, you’re less reliant on others for guidance and support and what have you from the top down, for those that are just starting their career, I would have to imagine they would have struggled mightily. And that’s why I believe that we are in an industry like ours. For total, like, I don’t believe, especially for younger practitioners that a remote only structure works because again, you are struggling to gain that mentorship, be in front of the people that you need to talk to, ask those questions on a whim or what have you. So yeah, I think it’s exceedingly difficult in our industry to be fully remote, especially for younger practitioners. Unless I suppose you’re a research lawyer and all you’re doing really is getting like assignments, cranking out work, and you’re kind of on your own. You’re siloed as it is.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Maybe, but a hundred percent. We’ve talked about this a lot in our industry practicing law. Again, the best way to do that is collaboration. Yeah, it’s very difficult to be collaborative remotely. So, I think that’s a big thing. And it completely obviously depends on the industry, right? You’re an IT consultant. That basically deals in emails all day anyway. You can work from wherever you want. If you’re a dentist, you’re not working remotely. Obviously you have to be in the office and I find that we are somewhere in the middle. We’re a service industry. We need to be client facing. Yes, Teams meetings have taken over a lot, which I like. It’s kind of that old adage, you know, this meeting could have been an email. You know, not all meetings can be emails, but a lot of those in-person meetings could be Teams meeting that take half the time and people don’t have to commute and all that good stuff. And again, I think that’s where flexibility is the biggest thing that comes to my mind when we’re talking about this stuff. And it’s something that, you know, Ryan, you touched on again, like let’s talk about it. We started this firm August of 2020, middle of the pandemic, or at least the middle of the beginning of the pandemic. That was something that we were able to do right away. Exactly. We were able to get everyone set up with computers that they could work from wherever they are. Our servers are remote. We’re all set up for that. It’s been fantastic. That being said, most people have been in the office most days, since we started this firm. Because of that environment that we have cultivated where yeah, it’s about collaboration. It’s about working together. It’s about being able to walk a couple offices down and ask a question to someone that, and I always say this, I remember myself as an articling student or junior lawyer. You walk down to a lawyer’s office and you don’t just walk in right away. You do that awkward dance where you kind of peer into the office and you see if they’re busy. Are they on the phone? Are they in the middle of something? No. Slyly looking in there. Slyly knocking. Oh, do you have a couple minutes? Okay. Alright, I’ll be really quick. Like, that was hard enough. Can you imagine just picking up the phone and calling a senior lawyer with just a benign question kind of thing? Like, no, again, to both of your points, it is going to be easy for a senior practitioner to silo themselves away and just practice law all day and they can do that remotely. As a junior lawyer, as a paralegal, as someone, anyone who’s collaborating with other people, I just don’t really see how you could be as efficient remotely as you are when you’re all under the same roof and we can, you know, there’s all these studies out there, there’s all these arguments that you could have about whether people are as efficient or not, when they’re working at home or they’re not. And I think even that is a personal.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Well, just as so part of, you know, part of how I learned to practice law, I watched lawyers that I, what aspired to be like, and well, how do they practice law? It’s pretty hard to do that in your house, where you’re just having phone conversations, whatever studies may or may not say or whatever. My own opinion, you know, so being around those lawyers watching, and part of it is you’re not even involved in all the files they’re involved in, but you’re seeing you’re part of that mix of seeing what they’re doing on a daily basis. Or they kind of come in at this time, they talk, or I see they’re coordinating with their assistants and paralegals. You can see the team approach. You can see what’s happening. You get an idea of how the sausage is being made, so to speak, which you would have no visibility of otherwise unless you’re around. The other thing I’d say, I think, you know, call it shop talk. And I think this is similar in a lot of industries. But, you know, you do learn, I don’t care if it’s a trade or profession or anything else. You do learn quite a bit by just, I’ll call it war stories or scar tissue or whatever. Oh, I had a job like this, or I had a file like this, and those war stories, and you find out, you know, kind of the history, if you will, of a project you’re working on, depending on your industry or file that you were on or whatever, you find out all of this background. You find out, you know, where kind of the work came from where this client came from. If you’re a junior lawyer involved and you’re just finding out how that person’s managing that relationship, there’s a whole bunch you’ll learn just by going for lunch or having a beer, or just being around. And again, you know, when it was remote, I did my darnedest to try to have some of that interaction, but it’s just not the same.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“No, it’s not. The Friday Zoom drinks didn’t quite hit the same.”
Jordan W. Smith
“No.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“I was just going to say, just to kind of put a bow on it, like, I feel personally very grateful for the mentorship that I had during my, you know, first years of practice. It was totally indispensable in my development as a lawyer and I would just hope every junior lawyer has a similar opportunity to get that face-to-face mentorship and interaction with some of the senior people at their firm. And again, I think the likelihood of that happening diminishes somewhat to that extent that you are not in a central location.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Yeah. And it like, you know, we’re taught to, as you know, when we’re starting out in this industry. Absorb everything you possibly can. Just listen to how people talk to their clients on the phone. You know, study someone’s body language when they’re doing a court application. Like all of this stuff was invaluable to learn as a junior lawyer. And it’s tough to be a sponge at home and so, sure, I think we could talk a lot about the return to work thing, and again, it is going to be different for different individuals and different industries and that, but as far as the legal industry, and any kind of industry where you have to be collaborative and work together, again, I am not ready to write the obituary for office real estate quite yet. Kind of pivoting, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, we talked a little bit about this, you know, we’re talking about how things have changed since the pandemic started and let’s talk about the positives again. I think I kind of talked a little bit about forced innovation. What has COVID and the pandemic brought along that has been a positive in your practice?”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Well, I have to say a lot of the lasting changes on the practice have been positives, quite honestly. Like, I can’t think of like, the ability to just be a little bit more flexible and be able to adapt and be able to do those types of things. I think by and large have been aa benefit for me personally. If anybody who knows me, knows that I’m not a neck tie, suit type day in and day out. So, I think like a lot of industries, ours has seen a little bit of a loosening of work attire which, hey, I’m all for. So, that’s another big thumbs up at least for me personally. I know some people out there might be cringing and if you sell men’s wear out there, my apologies for that but, yeah, I struggle to think of something again, the lasting changes on our practice and a lot of them that we’ve discussed already, to me, they’re largely positive. I’m having a hard time thinking of something that I would say was a downside.”
Jordan W. Smith
“Yeah, well, I would say I agree for the better part. If I disagree with you, probably, but I have, I tend to agree with you. Ryan, one of the things I will say. You know, at the beginning of all of this, you were talking about, real estate forum and kind of the social engagements and how it’s work but you kind of, I think you were kind of touching on it, that, but you were happy to do it. Because you kind of missed it. The one thing I’ll say is I realize having gone through that was actually a real positive for me in this respect. I absolutely appreciate the social element of me as a human being and how important it’s to me, which may sound obvious, but I really didn’t appreciate because let’s be honest, we work a lot. It we do, we do work a lot, and there’s a lot of pressure and demands and not, not much different than any, you know, a lot of other industries or business owners. It’s just how it is. And you juggle, you’re competing and you know, you have a lunch and a coffee and this, and whether it’s personal or professionally related and sometimes it’s a bit of both because you become friends with people you work with too, but you have all of that. And there are times particularly see the spring and summer because of the winter city you live in where it’s really compressed and you’re kind of tired. It’s September, you’re like, oh man, like you’ve just been running the treadmill, I don’t complain about it. I don’t have that mental fatigue part. Well, I, yeah, sure it’s a physical fatigue, but I , I appreciate how much I actually really enjoy it, how much I need it, how great it is, because of course, I didn’t have it for a little while. Right, so, part of the upside, I think of all of that is I have a vigor for those things where before, there were times where I don’t really appreciate what I had until I lost. And this is a Joni Mitchell song. It is. I won’t break into song, I’ll let you do that. There’s a karaoke bar there. But it also goes for the people you work with in the sense that, going back to what I said earlier too, is you and I did trust the people I work with anyway, but you really start to appreciate the collaboration with people you work with. Where, you know what, I can go hide this thing. I can take a look that there’s this file and there’s all these things that need to be done and I don’t need to do all of them. I can do this piece and that person can do this and we can kind of deal with that and it’s going to get done well because they’ve been there. And it wasn’t, you know, and that is a counterpoint too, walking down and asking a bunch of questions and knowing everything that’s going on is we could do more, it’s a bit of a black box in some ways and stuff kind of happened and it wasn’t as connected as before, but it happened well, and it kind of affirms how I was asked. To trust, and it worked well. And it kind of was this test case for it and coming out of it, I can say that I’m and I’ve never been a huge micromanager and people who work with me know that, but it just confirms to me, you know, you do have that, working with a team, being able to hand things off, it all gets done well and that level of trust and it all just works. So, that was a positive too.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Well, yeah, like people got thrown into the fire, during all of that. And it was really cool to see how people almost flourished in that with the pressure on them. And that was super fun for me to see where, you know, back against the wall, people will surprise you with what they’re able to do, and that’s been super cool.I think the thing for me that was refreshing I would say throughout all of this is that we removed a lot of the, I don’t want to say formality, I don’t know if I want to say, bullshit, or what have you. But it’s, you know, COVID really hammered into people. Just get the job done. I don’t care how you get it done, I don’t care when you do it again, when we’re working remotely, people’s schedules were so weird. People were logging in at like 9:00pm to do a couple hours of work. When they used to be like, you know, eight to four employees. It’s funny, like you give people flexibility and you let them run with it a little bit and it’s a pleasant surprise. When they come back and you see that they actually care, they’re not just doing the job because you know they’re at the office and they’re forced to do so. No, like people really care and people are, if you invest in people, they’ll invest back. And again, the amount of people that we work with that. You know, they go above and beyond to get the job done. And that’s incredible. And I think, again, I’m not a big ass in the chair person, pardon my French, for lack of a better term, as in the chairperson, I don’t care if you get here at six and you stay until you know, nine o’clock at night and you’re always here. Like if your work product doesn’t reflect that, that’s not impressive. What is impressive is if you’re barely here, but your work product is like through the roof. Again, I’m someone who I care about results and again, I don’t really exactly care about how you get from Point A to Point B as long as you do a good job and the work product is there. And that was super exciting for me to see where it’s like you give people a little bit of autonomy, a little bit of freedom, and to your point, Jordan, you put some trust in them. Like people will impress you and it’s super exciting to see again, what people will just be motivated on their own to go out and do it. So, that was something that, you know, excited me, I guess, for lack of a better term.”
Ryan C. Kemp
“Beyond that, I think and I would imagine that there are a lot of examples out there of this. When we, you know, the timing of when we launched is obviously unique, but during that period of time and like from that period till now, I think there’s been, we’ve had the benefit of some collective scar tissue as a group. You feel like you were kind of in a figurative foxhole with some of the people that you were working with, even though you may not have been in the office together but you know you had sort of like, that team mentality and you’re trying to make the best out of it in an admittedly very stressful and difficult situation. And so I think that collective scar tissue helps strengthen bonds amongst the people you work with.”
Graeme R. Swainson
“Remember when every commercial at the beginning of this, it’s like we’re all in this together. We were really all in this together. And yeah, we’re coming out of it together.”
