How In-House Leaders Are Trying to Keep Stressed, Overworked Legal Teams Sane
The pandemic has taxed legal departments in many ways. But largely absent from the conversation is the mental toll that the COVID crisis has taken on corporate counsel and the tactics that in-house leaders have developed to mitigate the damage.
March 12, 2021 at 06:42 AM
9 minute read
As Erika Munro Kennerly was settling into her new job as the associate general counsel at Endeavor Content in New York, the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to spread across the country.
Soon, Kennerly, who'd planned to expand her legal team, which also has members in Los Angeles, was dealing with a hiring freeze and an avalanche of unexpected legal work. One of her lawyers went on leave due to the death of a family member. Another left for a different company.
"It was really tough and the lawyers I had on the team had to take on huge amounts of work they wouldn't normally do. You have COVID. And now we're all remote," she says. "One of the things I wanted to do immediately was create a strong family type of experience for us. I knew the only way we could get through this was by coming together and creating strong interpersonal relationships with one another."
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