There is a light at the end of the tunnel. While things have changed profoundly, and will continue to shift in the coming months and year, lawyers are now seeing some activities begin to normalize. Conversations are shifting from crisis response to adapting and forward progress. As legal teams begin adjusting and preparing for possible future crises, they can build a recovery strategy upon known constants and lessons learned from recent turbulence.

Today, any discussion of e-discovery must address the shifting data footprint. An unprecedented spike in the use of collaboration applications and the creation of unique cloud source data has occurred. Rapid adoption of tools including Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and other communication platforms is quickly displacing email and changing the scope of corporate data forever. From a legal and compliance perspective, this shift will have permanent implications on the workflows, technologies and best practices used in e-discovery.

Working from this foundation, and the goal of focusing on resilience, below are tips to help legal teams get back on track as the world emerges from the pandemic.

Keep teams connected. The events of this year, and the shift to remote work, has shed new light on the importance of team connection to maintain continuity and productivity. Despite the isolation, the pandemic has unified colleagues in some ways. People are more sensitive to their co-workers' individual circumstances and well-being. New lines of communication have opened and initiatives to promote collaboration are helping sustain (and improve) workplace culture. These efforts can and should continue, regardless of what the future workplace looks like.

Increase efforts to protect IP and sensitive information. In addition to improving engagement, maintaining a strong culture will help mitigate risk. A severely disrupted job market and employee churn paired with a dispersed workforce is likely to increase the incidence of data leakage or theft. More than 30 million people lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic—and many of them took company laptops and information with them. Legal teams need to be thinking about what will happen when these people take that content with them to a new employer. Protecting culture, and taking additional steps to mitigate the loss of trade secrets and technical expertise should be a top priority during recovery efforts.

Continue to invest in expertise. Now is not the time to cut corners. The data landscape is larger and more diverse than ever before, and the environment in which legal teams are working is increasingly complex. Investment in people with technical capabilities and expertise in the key areas that impact the organization must continue. This includes retaining in-house and/or outside experts that can navigate unique data challenges, create custom solutions and offer knowledge of legal and regulatory risk factors.

Revisit technology needs. A new data landscape also means new technology needs. Files originating in collaboration platforms and other cloud-based sources are not the digital formats—email, attachments, text messages—legal and e-discovery professionals have come to understand. Teams are now going be challenged with storing, collecting, processing and analyzing a variety of novel types of rich audio and video media files and short-form messages. Each data type, and each different version of an application, may require a unique methodology for collection, and rendering into a format that can be reviewed and analyzed in context of other electronic evidence. New technology and workflows will come into the fold to meet these new needs.

Embrace project-based work. In order to cope with the challenges of working remotely, or juggling at-home demands with work, many teams have shifted to a project-based approach. In parallel, the nature of corporate command and control has started to dissipate. Many fields, including law, are likely to feel pressure from employees to continue measuring work project-by-project, or via the accomplishment of micro-goals. This may also lead to additional growth in the gig economy. These new dynamics in the ways people want to work may force lawyers to adjust the allocation of work among their teams.

Change typically doesn't come easy for lawyers. This is a group that treads lightly when entering new territory. Things are different now though, and change has been forced on a global scale. Restoring a strong practice and a strong business in the new landscape will require openness to new technology, approaches and thinking. This doesn't mean starting from scratch. Teams can evaluate the parts of their business that remained resilient during the crisis, focus in on their core priorities, and build from there.

Wendy King is a senior managing director in FTI Consulting's Technology segment. She has more than 15 years of experience in e-discovery practice support.