As states across the country begin easing COVID-19 social distancing restrictions, companies are faced with the challenge of engineering a safe and legally defensible framework for transitioning employees back into the office environment. But due to the extraordinary nature of the pandemic, corporate legal departments may find themselves pivoting further in the direction of technology instead of outside attorneys as they look for rapid-fire guidance through uncharted territory.

At least that's what the folks over at SixFifty—law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's tech subsidiary—were banking on this week as they rolled out a Return to Work Toolset, an automated platform that helps companies determine which employees can safely reenter the workplace. The solution also solicits employer responses to a series of questions around items such as the existence of corporate COVID-19 screening and testing plans to help businesses. The answers are then used to automatically generate relevant policies and guidelines.

Kimball Parker, CEO of SixFifty, believes that products such as the Return to Work Toolset will be in high demand, pointing to a feeling among companies that are "lost" at how to begin guiding workers back into offices. "If an employer doesn't take reasonable steps to prevent COVID-19 from spreading through a workplace, they can be subject to serious liability, company-ending liability," he said.

To be sure, Wilson Sonsini isn't the only law firm attempting to address that need through tech. Earlier this week, McDermott Will & Emery launched an ongoing webinar series navigating various return-to-work topics that will be continually updated Tuesdays and Thursdays. Meanwhile, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart added a Return to Work Guide to its online COVID-19 Resource Center, which includes analysis on various state employer guidelines as the emerge from state to state.

But with flesh and blood attorneys only a phone call away, will corporate legal departments feel comfortable relying on technology—automated or otherwise—to help them chart a legally defensible path forward? Zach Abramowitz, a consultant in the legal technology space, admitted that legal departments are generally nervous about using "something that's not people."

In evaluating a product like SixFifty's Return to Work Toolset, companies would have to weigh the potential time and cost savings against the potential for legal risk should something go wrong. "I definitely think the [chief financial officer] of any organization would look at a tool like this as a win but the legal department is there to be cautious," Abramowitz said.

But there may be some factors unique to COVID-19 that could ultimately tip the scales in favor of SixFifty and other legal tech providers looking to craft return to work solutions. Parker at SixFifty argued that while lawyers have legal advice or policy templates in place for dealing with longstanding workplace issues such as sexual harassment, responding to a pandemic could necessitate a more ground-up approach—which likely translates to higher legal bills.

Given the fluidity of the COVID-19 crisis thus far, sudden changes—such as an update in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, for example—could render some very expensive legal advice suddenly obsolete. But a tech platform can be updated constantly.

"This is a situation where I don't see how you could do it without a technology assist," Parker said.

Still, will that be enough to sway corporate legal departments? Abramowitz pointed out that both law firm tech subsidiaries and stand-alone tech startups alike all struggle to walk clients past the fear of legal risk. But in the case of return-to-work solutions, he thinks that law firm-associated products may have an edge given the standing reputations for legal expertise those institutions typically enjoy.

In the case of corporate legal departments, Abramowitz posited that tech is already being successfully deployed to deal with a variety of COVID-19 related problems. "I think that there have been some huge wins for companies that have already made investments in technology and I think over the course of the next year we'll probably start hearing some of those trickle out," he said.