Should the mail room now be owned by the information governance arm of the firm?

Pre-pandemic, this wasn't a necessary consideration. Then, when the pandemic hit and sent the workforce to home offices, most law firms quickly started scanning to email to get the mail out. Facilities management or available clerical staff went into the office and cobbled together this new work process. In the midst of the crisis and no indication of its curation, it is likely to say that no firm had information governance on its mind once again.

Mail has been a perfunctory function aligned with other physical office services, but the pandemic shifted mail to a critical, and digital operation. The proportion of U.S. lawyers who now want to work remotely at least one day a week has doubled from the pre-pandemic period. While 37 percent of lawyers expressed an interest in remote work prior to the pandemic, 76 percent now favor the remote work option, according to this year's Peer Monitor and Georgetown Law State of the Legal Industry Report 2021.