France and the lawyers who work here breathed a collective sigh of relief this week when President Emmanuel Macron announced that the lifting of strict lockdown measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 might begin May 11.

Managing partners at law firms in France say they have been coping through the restrictions that began March 17, but they welcome the prospect of not having to do it for more than another month or so.

"We don't really know at this point what May 11 means, but any return to normal is good news and the government is saying we are on the right road," said Olivier Vermeulen, managing partner of Paul Hastings in Paris.

Dana Anagnostou, co-managing partner of the Paris office of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, said the announcement Monday changed the conversation at her firm almost immediately.

"It felt like we could see the light at the end of the tunnel," Anagnostou said.

"Before the government announced a target date, we were making projections that were two months out, three months out, but there was no way to think realistically longer-term than that because we had no idea when this period would end," Anagnostou said.

"Of course, we are all adults and we know that May 11 may not hold because of the virus, and it won't be back to a normal economy the next day," she said. "But this will give our clients, and us, the feeling that we can get back to business."

Spending decisions are different, too, now that the government has urged companies to plan for the post-coronavirus future, said a managing partner of a Big Law firm in Paris who did not want to be identified.

"We have been holding onto cash, delaying some projects that aren't urgent," the partner said. "Now we can start to look at reviving some of that spending."

French law firms and their clients have been relying on generous government support programs, made available early on, to keep their businesses going without the drastic staff cuts of their U.S. or U.K. counterparts.

Anagnostou said that since Kramer Levin, like many Big Law offices in Paris, relied on furloughs during the confinement, it will not face having to staff up from scratch again once the restrictions are lifted.

"In France, it takes three months to end someone's contract, even an independent contractor, as most lawyers here are," she said. "And once they go, you are not sure of getting them back. Fortunately, we don't have to do that."

Lawyers in France and elsewhere have benefited from being able to work remotely without too much disruption to their supply chains.

"In some ways, the confinement measures have not affected us as much as they have affected some of our clients," one managing partner told Law.com International.

In fact, some managing partners said the requirement to work remotely had given their firms a chance to refine their systems, which had not been put to the test in quite this way before.

"I'm not sure we're going to have a real 'before' and 'after,' because we were already used to remote working," Vermeulen said. "But this period has been useful for seeing what works and what doesn't, and what we might continue to do."

He added that the lockdown on travel had allowed the firm to reevaluate whether and when lawyers needed to jump on a train or a plane—lessons that could be applied long after the lockdown is lifted, he said.

Many French firms have been carefully rebalancing lawyers' workload during the crisis. In some cases, that has meant redirecting lawyers to busy areas like restructuring from less-busy ones like M&A, encouraging lawyers to take time for continuing education or to work on firm administration, or even take vacation time.

For Vermeulen, the reorganization of work was not about bolstering the firm's bottom line, but about keeping lawyers engaged.

"Redirecting the same amount of business from one practice to another does not affect cash flow," he said. "But it does affect morale.

"We want our people to stay well, in every sense of the word," he added. "We organize virtual cafés and have more regular team calls so that people can maintain human contact. But keeping people engaged in meaningful work is also very important."

If the May 11 date for restarting the French economy holds, that means France's strict lockdown is now at the halfway point. Some managing partners said they thought the government's timing was just about right.

"We've done four weeks of this, and the novelty has worn off," Anagnostou said. "You're getting the work done, but it's no longer as much fun to do video calls, and you've had enough of Zoom meetings.

"Another four weeks," she said, "feels doable."