A number of firms are now stress-testing their agile working capabilities.

Slaughter and May and Clifford Chance are the latest firms to roll out agile-working stress-testing measures, as firms prepare for the prospect of growing coronavirus disruption in London.

Slaughters has initiated an agile working program with its staff working from home en masse, run by the firm's director of facilities and operations Carol Frost, according to one person at the firm.

The firm is being divided into two with roughly half working from home while the other half come into the office, in order to test its online system's capabilities for mass remote working.

A firm spokesperson said in a statement: "We are taking sensible precautions to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all our staff and clients. As part of our planning, a number of teams worked from home today and we will look to repeat this exercise with other teams in the coming days".

Clifford Chance is set to run a two day-long remote working test in its London office, a spokesperson for the firm confirmed to Law.com International's Legal Week.

The spokesperson added that the process would allow people and teams who rarely work from home to familiarise themselves with the processes and systems.

CC chief operating officer Caroline Firstbrook said in a statement: "Over recent years we have made some very significant investments to support agile working. As well as IT infrastructure and equipment, there has also been an important cultural change around the firm so that in many parts of the firm some element of remote working is now completely standard.

"However, the experience of our teams in Asia Pacific has underlined that when everyone in an office has to work remotely over an extended period and often on relatively short notice, we identify gaps in our preparations and opportunities for improvement.

"The aim of this test is to find these out in advance, so we can take any appropriate actions to address them.  We appreciate that these tests will put some additional pressure on our people but ultimately, they should mean we are in a much stronger and more resilient position, which will benefit our clients and our teams."

The duo's measures come after Linklaters initiated a similar programme this week. Legal Week revealed Wednesday that offices across the firm's global network, including London, are dividing their practice groups into two teams as part of a global exercise to test the firm's remote-working technology. One team will work from home while the other team remains at the office, and will swap round after a day.

A spokesperson for fellow magic circle firm Allen & Overy said: "We're not currently giving details of our preparations, in part because they continuing evolve due to changing guidance and circumstances, but all our lawyers and majority of support staff have the proven capability to work from home if required."

Firms continue to be disrupted by the virus outbreak. Last month, Baker McKenzie closed its London officer after an employee reported being ill after returning from Italy, the firm later reopened after they tested negative for the virus. In New York, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan shut its office after a member of staff caught the virus.

A number of firms including Linklaters, Baker Botts and Latham & Watkins have cancelled their annual partner conferences.

With reporting by Krishnan Nair.