A citizen wearing a mask walks down an empty subway entrance during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Ryland West

The coronavirus' impact on law firms isn't limited to lawyers.

Law firm paralegals and staff working on business development, marketing, IT, accounting and more have also been forced through a drastic shift. For some, the transition to working from home has been simple; others have been instructed to come into the office even while lawyers are working remotely, they've said in interviews.

Jake Eletto, the chief of staff at Noor, a recruiting firm that helps find professional staff for Big Law firms, said he's seen "a range of reactions and emotions" from the support staff he works with amid the pandemic.

"Some folks are really concerned about being furloughed or laid off," he wrote in an email March 19, after some firms had switched to working from home but before New York required all nonessential businesses to go remote. "Others are maintaining a positive outlook and expecting it to blow over in a couple weeks."

Since then, some firms—mostly outside Big Law—have already laid off staff. Goldberg Segalla, Belkin Burden Goldman, and Robinson Brog Leinwand Greene Genovese & Gluck have done so, as Law.com reported earlier this week. A new one joined the list Friday, with the small Manhattan real estate firm Heiberger & Associates filing an emergency action in Manhattan seeking to prevent its landlord from drawing down a letter of credit.

The filing included an affidavit from firm leader Jamie Heiberger-Harrison in which she said some staff have been laid off, but the firm can't possibly pay its rent, make payroll and pay other bills with no business coming in as a result of the court closures and economic disruption due to the virus.

There have also been some reports of firms freezing new hires, for both staff and attorneys, according to industry consultants and recruiters.

Jonathan Friedman of Friedman Williams, who places professional staff at law firms in several major markets, said he has seen a mix—some firms are halting searches while others have asked him to continue looking for candidates. And some have pushed forward with high-priority searches while tapping the brakes on other positions, he said.

"Maybe 60% of my clients say, 'we've got to take a couple weeks break. We're freezing all staff hiring,'" he said. "Forty percent of my clients … are saying, 'do not hold anything. We want to still move forward. We're going to do all of our interviewing remotely, either video or phone calls," and either start employees remotely or finish the hiring process later.

IT staff have been a key part of firms' rapid pivot to working from home. Frank Gillman, a former Big Law chief information officer who now works at consulting firm Vertex Advisors, said firms can deploy cloud-based software to manage their teams, documents and workflows within the space of about a week. Staff can be trained for new roles even if the firm is in dire straits, he said. But firms also need to think about coming back from the crisis stronger than before.

"'How we survive' is built into 'how we come back,' anyway," he said.

Not all tech upgrades are emergencies, however, and some firms are pressing ahead with strategic projects they planned before the crisis: Joel Carpenter, the Boston-based managing partner at Sullivan & Worcester, said in a recent interview that he hoped one challenge of remote work—reviews of bills by staff and billing partners—would be improved by upgrading the firm's legal practice management software to Elite 3E, which was already planned for the end of March.

"I wish I had accelerated my Elite conversion," he said. "This entire situation has been an exercise in figuring out a little later than you would like about how difficult this is all going to be."

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Gillman's last name. The error has been corrected

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