It's not that long ago that Linklaters, one of the world's elite law firms, announced that their employees would be free to work from home for up to half of the week. The firm believed that the COVID-19 pandemic (and the associated enforced remote working experiment) had given them an opportunity to explore in more depth their approach to agile and remote working. Linklaters are not alone in their approach. Other major law practices around the world are now allowing staff to work from home part of the time—the question is whether or not this will become the de facto working practice for the legal sector. Is this just a temporary way of working or will this agile approach remain once we return to 'normal'?

As firms evolve and adapt to meet the demands of a different way of working, ensuring that their workforce can seamlessly interact with each other and their clients is critical to delivering the service clients expect. The legal sector is well known for leading from the front and law firms everywhere are adopting innovative new technologies to better reflect the 'work from anywhere environment'—ensuring secure access to resources and enhancing the end user experience will be key factors at play. Essentially, mirroring the experience of working from an office is what's required.

And with so many legal firms proving that they have the ability for their staff to work successfully from home, how do they ensure that their people are just as productive as they were before? IT and security teams will certainly have to grapple with security and compliance issues that arise from agile and remote working, and they need to ensure that their people can connect securely, without sacrificing user experience. And, critically, all of this needs to be done without compromising the service level provided to clients. It all needs to be completely seamless.