On Monday – just two short days and five blog posts ago 😉 – I published twelve stats for you that illustrate the extent of remote working trends and the challenges that still remain with them.  But, those are general stats.  What about trends in the eDiscovery community?  Thanks to Compliance, we now have some interesting stats with regard to how the eDiscovery community has embraced remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic!

In their just released white paper (Corporate moves and law firm clues: Who’s taking action during the pandemic?), Compliance has published the results of their COVID-19 Work From Home (“WFH”) survey conducted in June to help you answer the question: “How well does my team stack up to my peers in their WFH environment?”

Compliance received 165 individual responses to their survey from corporate legal departments and law firms from across the country. Of these respondents, approximately 64 percent were from law firms, while the remainder of the responses – approximately 36 percent – was from corporate legal departments.

The goal of the survey was to provide insight into how teams within the eDiscovery community are reacting to the pandemic and how it is changing the way legal professionals work. The core survey consisted of five multiple-choice questions focused on the new WFH paradigm and its effects on productivity. Additionally, the study included a question that asked respondents to forecast the long-term impact of these changes and where they saw their organizations a year from now.  Here are the questions they asked (the choices for questions 1 through 5 were Strongly agree, Somewhat agree, Somewhat disagree and Strongly disagree; the choices for question 6 are shown below):

• Question 1: Since starting remote work, my team’s productivity has increased.
• Question 2: My WFH team has access to all necessary tools and technology in order to perform their primary functions.
• Question 3: My team can perform from home–there is no “need” per se to be in an office environment.
• Question 4: My team is looking forward to returning to the office.
• Question 5: Looking 6 months into the future, my team will be offered the option to work from home.
• Question 6: Over the next year, my firm will (select all that apply): Outsource more technology resources to the cloud, Downsize their office footprint, Allow flexibility with employees to work from home, Invest in software and systems to secure work from home access to technology, Outsource more work to providers, Focus on collaboration and accessibility.

Compliance also sent a copy of the results to survey respondents with their answers compared to the rest of the group, which I thought was pretty cool.

I’m not going to steal their thunder except to say that, generally, respondents from both groups were very accepting of the WFH arrangement and one group showed an even more flexible attitude toward remote work than the other did.  Want to know how accepting and which group embraced it more?  You can go here to find the link to the survey – don’t worry, it’s free and you won’t even have to provide any personal info to get it!

So, what do you think?  Are you embracing remote work or are you missing working in the office?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.