During each of our Alternative Hangout sessions we pose a series of survey questions to participants. At our first In-House session we heard from the following speakers:

At each session we pose a number of survey questions to our audience. Here is what we asked them and how they responded:

1. What impact will the accelerated adoption of technology during the lockdown have on the number of people employed in corporate legal teams in the next year?

The majority (69%) of attendees responded that about the same number of people will be employed in-house going forward. 25% of responses indicated the belief that few people would be employed in-house and 6% of those surveyed said that more people would be employed in corporate legal teams in the next year.

Throughout the course of the hour long seminar there was a clear consensus from attendees, who included GCs, Legal Directors, CLOs, CIOs, that the future for corporate legal teams was a positive one despite the current global pandemic.

 

2. Do you think that in-house legal teams will maintain the momentum on technology innovation once the lockdown ends?

At all our Alternative Events technology and innovation is a key feature and one many legal teams strive to embrace.

86% of respondents believe that the momentum on technology innovation will continue post lockdown and the remainder weren’t sure how technology innovation momentum would be affected.

Given that no respondents believed that momentum will significantly slow down falls in line with what our wider community has been saying since lockdown began.

3. Do you have the right skill sets within your legal team to support working from home (WFH)?

There was very little time for businesses to prepare agile working strategies and policies when lockdown was announced. Over recent weeks we have had many discussions with our community about what they have learnt from the sudden need to have entire legal departments working from home, what they did right and what they could have done better.

When we posed this question there was a lively discussion amongst attendees about how their teams had adapted at such short notice and 95% of respondents said that their legal team had the right skill sets to support working from home.

 

4.  How are you personally coping with WFH during lockdown?

The final question we asked attendees was how they were personally coping
with working from home during lockdown. Again, this prompted a lot of discussion amongst attendees. 73% of attendees responded that they were coping either ‘very well’ or ‘reasonably well’, 19% said they were coping fine, 3% acknowledged that it was harder than they had initially expected and 5% said there were not coping well.

Whilst the majority of respondents were positive about how they were coping much of the discussion centred around team members who were living in house shares or had young families at home who had signalled that they were finding working from home more challenging.
All those taking part in the seminar said that they were checking in regularly with team members and that the mental wellbeing of their teams was paramount.

To learn how to participate in future Alternative In-House Hangouts sessions click here.