Alla Roytberg playing piano at her home in Forest Hills. Courtesy Photo.
Editor's note: The Law Journal has asked readers to share what life was like for them during the COVID-19 pandemic—how they got through the once-in-a-century crisis and how it changed them. Submissions are edited for length and clarity. If you are interested in sharing your experiences, contact New York bureau chief Andrew Denney at [email protected] We are a small mother-daughter firm with a focus on family law, alternative dispute resolution (mediation, collaborative Law, negotiation) and other legal services under the family umbrella, such as residential real estate and trusts and estates. Our main office has been in Forest Hills, Queens, and we have a secondary office in Manhattan for client meetings. We used Zoom effectively pre-pandemic to address the needs of geographically diverse clients. But most of our mediations, consultations, estate planning meetings and real estate closings have been fully in-person. On March 12, 2020, we placed our first notice on our website and social media: we will conduct all meetings on video due to the pandemic. At that time, the notice said "until April 19th." Well ... that continued and continues to this day. We both work from our homes, have daily calls and two internal Zoom meetings each week, one on client work and the other on practice management. Most clients seem happy with the arrangement. They do not need to commute to our offices and get the opportunity to have their legal needs addressed in a cost-effective and expedient manner. Electronic filings of matrimonial cases and executive orders allowing remote notarization and remote will executions have helped everyone tremendously. For real estate closings, we have been mostly handling those remotely as well, via escrow, FedEx or email of documents and wiring of funds. 2020 was a "reset" button for me that enabled me to look at my practice anew and reexamine how we do business. I now have indoor gardens in my home, am baking bread and finally taking those jazz piano lessons that have always been on my bucket list. I am also incredibly more productive and effective in my work. Saving time by not having to commute is important, but even more valuable to me is the fact that my creative energy is not depleted by the pure logistics of everyday practice—runs to the court houses, real estate closings, from one office to another, from one networking meeting to another. What do I miss? I miss being able to offer a cup of coffee to a client and to give a colleague a hug as we take a moment to interact during a break at a conference or in a CLE program. I think that what we need to do is to take all the best out of this quagmire of a year and implement it as we venture out and return to three-dimensional human interaction.