While lawyers are reporting they have transitioned well to working from home, getting hired at a new firm and meeting new colleagues virtually poses entirely new complications.

Should I dress in office attire for remote work at a new firm? How can I keep my kids quiet and occupied during this important call? Where can I hide this pile of laundry before my next video meeting? Should I use virtual Zoom backgrounds?

Since March 15, about the time when much of the country started working from home, there have been more than 400 partner moves at Am Law 200 firms in the U.S., according to ALM data. Many of these lateral partners have been "onboarded" into their new firms without ever meeting new colleagues or clients in person or stepping foot into their new offices.

The moves present challenges for the lawyers' new firms, too.

"We're still onboarding new people and lateral hires, but [the shutdowns] added the additional complexity of not being able to bring people into one of our physical offices," said Pattric Rawlins, Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch's IP team leader. This week, the firm added seven new attorneys in Orange County and Palo Alto, California. Rawlins said the entire recruiting process was remote, and the new lawyers' onboarding will be, too.

Some lateral hires shared details about the remote onboarding process and what issues have popped up along the way.

Conversations have been edited for clarity and length.

Kevin Hahm, who moved from the Federal Trade Commission to Hunton Andrews Kurth's Washington, D.C., office in April:

The firm has been great: they shipped a big monitor, printer, docking station and everything I needed to get set up. But I soon realized I didn't have a good space for everything. There are two logical places for me to work: the home office on our fourth floor where my girls' bedroom is, but they're doing their schoolwork from home and took over the home office, and the dining room table, which my wife took over because she's also working from home.

So I had to set everything up in my bedroom. I'm using one of the virtual backgrounds the firm created for us, and one of the reasons I do a virtual background is because I'm in a bedroom—you can see the bed behind me, and you can see the laundry hamper.

When you're doing a call or virtual meeting with a larger group, I think a Zoom video is so much better than doing it over the phone. There's always this issue on conference calls with 10-20 people interrupting and talking over one another. But having video meetings helps, especially for me, where I don't yet know everyone. Matching a face with a voice with a name at the bottom of a screen has been really helpful for me.

Jessica Nall, who joined Baker McKenzie in San Francisco from regional firm Farella Braun + Martel in June:

It's been a surreal process making a virtual lateral move from a regional firm to Baker McKenzie, with thousands of lawyers around the globe. I've joined the firm's San Francisco office without ever actually seeing the physical office—I'm told my office is quite nice, but I have no idea when I'll actually get to see it.

Instead, I'm on Zoom meetings pretty constantly meeting my new colleagues worldwide. I like it best when people don't use an artificial Zoom background because seeing their actual homes behind them helps me get to know them and remember them. For example, my new partner Widge Devaney has a golden wall behind him that makes him look like he has a halo on like an angel. Another colleague, Jerome Tomas, has an office in his basement, and his background is full of musical instruments, concert posters and pop art.

I've also gotten to meet tons of my new colleagues' kids and pets, which is always great, and they've met mine, too. For the last several weeks, I've been staying at a friend's vacation house at the coast, and the Wi-Fi is weak except for one particular seat at the kitchen table. Behind me is a chalkboard with the family grocery list. My husband, children [a 2-month-old daughter and 5-year-old son] and nanny are always coming and going while they wash dishes, eat and play. So hopefully, I'm providing plenty of material for my new colleagues to remember me.

Mary Hansen, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath's white-collar group co-leader who moved to Duane Morris' Philadelphia office in April:

The firm has done a phenomenal job with the transition and making it seamless to be at home. You can't do anything about not being allowed to have in-person lunches or other social aspects of the job, but they've been great doing video meetings, hosting virtual happy hours, both of which has been great in transitioning and meeting my new colleagues, who have been awesome in getting me involved with cases and networking opportunities.

One thing that's a little weird is that I don't wear makeup on a regular basis anymore—and when you get a call from a client asking to have a virtual meeting in five minutes, that causes a little panic. I've defaulted to, "I'll do the Zoom, but it's at your risk, because I'm in a tank top, maybe I haven't showered, and I don't have on makeup." But everyone's been a little more humanized, and it's nice to see everyone in their natural habitats.

Jill Louis, a Dallas-based attorney who joined Perkins Coie from K&L Gates in June:

Everyone [in my household] has their own little quadrant they go to: My husband works from home and has an office upstairs and my dining room is where my college-age daughter is accustomed to studying. This situation has given me the opportunity to shore up my home office—we had one printer in the house that I quickly realized was going to be over-served, so I reached out to the good people at Staples and ordered a gigantic one.

Perkins Coie has made sure new hires like me are well-integrated, and it's been a very seamless transition joining the firm while working remotely. We're all able to connect pretty quickly, and we work on a team for most matters, which has been really good.

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