Without a federal COVID-19 directive, states implemented their own varying shelter-in-place mandates during the early days of the pandemic. But while the majority of states enacted shutdowns to offset growing coronavirus infections, seven states didn’t issue orders barring residents from nonessential activities.
Still, despite not having official stay-at-home orders, most law firms firms in Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming mirrored their colleagues across the country by working remotely to protect against potential coronavirus exposure.
To be sure, of those seven states, South Dakota was the only one that didn’t require any businesses to close. But law firms that could work from home took the opportunity to do so, said Ballard Spahr’s Sioux Falls, South Dakota, office managing partner Amy Arndt.
“For most legal firms in this area, there was a period of stay-at-home policies in place,” she said. “Our firm is still working remotely in Sioux Falls and we’ve just started a phase one return-from-home policy.”
Since mid-March, Ballard Spahr’s Sioux Falls lawyers and staffers have worked from home, with only in-person notary being conducted in the office until the state Supreme Court implemented remote notarization in late March.
Currently, all lawyers and staffers use firm-purchased laptops and work via VPN or Citrix, Arndt said.
To be sure, in some of Ballard Spahr’s offices in 15 U.S. cities, roughly 10 lawyers can now volunteer to return back to the office, Arndt explained. Before they are allowed into the building, the lawyers must submit a health form, provide their temperature and not have any COVID-19 symptoms.
During the height of the pandemic, firms in nearby states that hadn’t enacted stay-at-home mandates were also embracing remote working, Arndt noted.
“The smaller firms I heard from sent their staff home, but the attorneys came in on a limited basis. In particular, in Nebraska I know they follow social distancing and some of the larger firms worked remotely,” she said. “Firms took a cautious approach. Our industry is a service industry and can mostly provide those services remotely, at least most [of them].”
Michael Gehret, of Armstrong Teasdale’s newly launched Salt Lake City office, said most attorneys in the area are also still working from home, as Utah counties issue strongly recommended social-distancing guidance.
With regards to the lawyers who are venturing back into the office, Gehret said they usually fall into two camps: They need a quiet place to work or they are “vigilantes” that felt COVID-19 wasn’t “real and felt like social distancing, and the stay-at-home mandates [were] completely an overreaction and would go into the office as a protest,” he said.
Kaysville, Utah-based solo practitioner Brent Burningham said his already remote firm wasn’t disrupted much during the COVID-19 pandemic. While depositions have moved to video conference platforms, clients are still comfortable talking over the phone or in-person at a co-working space, he noted.
When asked if he felt less comfortable working in a co-working space during the height of a pandemic, Burningham said, “I feel more comfortable working in that space now, more than before. It’s really easy to reserve a space when I need it now.”
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June 24, 2020 at 11:00PM
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