Predicting how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the legal industry, particularly over the longer haul, may be foolhardy, especially since there surely are many twists and turns ahead we cannot foresee. Nonetheless, I will give it a shot and look forward (I hope) to revisiting this column someday to see just how accurate, or dead wrong, I was!

• Working remotely, on a much larger scale, is here to stay.

Lawyers working from home has slowly crept into the fabric of the practice, especially in law firms. This started with sending emails after dinner, expanded to more full-scale work after hours once IT platforms allowed seamless access, spread to working at home on some Friday afternoons, and has grown ever since.

Some firms embraced this phenomenon and cultures have developed in which it has been common for lawyers to do a fairly significant amount of work remotely. Nevertheless, there has been some pushback to more fully adopting wide-scale remote work policies. Some of that has been attributed to the need of getting entry level lawyers acclimated to the firm, which many believe can only be done through in-person tutelage. Moreover, the bonds that tie lawyers and staff together can be much better forged, so the precept goes, through in-person interaction.

The first two months of this crisis have truly been game changers in this regard, as lawyers, and most of their clients, have had no choice but to work from home. While some were initially more facile than others, the reports I have received have been that this is proving to be a success—lawyers are getting their work done, are billing available hours, and are generally in sync with their clients. Zoom and other platforms have fostered collaboration and, at least a bit,  the bonding objective among firm lawyers.

While none of us know exactly what the "new normal" may be, I fully expect that working remotely will continue to be commonplace—not at the current level, of course, but certainly much more than what existed pre-crisis. Law firm leaders know better than anyone that real estate costs are typically the second highest expense for firms (behind compensation).  Increasing the number of dollars that are generated by remote work will only further help to reduce the amount of office space that a firm needs. As firms are expected to scramble for top-line revenue during this crisis, anything that can help on the cost side—like remote work—is likely to be encouraged.

• Expect some office closures, especially overseas.

Firms have greatly expanded their footprints in the 2000s, particularly among those that can be categorized as national or international in scope. General market feedback, especially domestically, has suggested that many of these moves made perfect sense, as firms entered new cities via combinations with well-respected, indigenous firms or added strong groups, both of which have served as solid foundations in a new city or region. Additionally, some of these expansion efforts were client-driven, as firms were assured they would get new work if they could get 'troops on the ground' in a new market, which is an ideal motivation for such a move.

In other cases, though, the establishment of new offices may have been triggered by the "put a pin in the map" strategy, which posits that if a firm wants to be considered national or international, it simply needs to be in certain cities. Moves like that can be fraught with danger, as they can cause a firm to stretch in making a deal that, in other circumstances, it might have otherwise decided to forgo.

It is just my opinion, but it seems that many of those stretches occurred among firms that should have been content to be national players, but made ill-advised forays overseas. While firms don't publicly distribute P&Ls on each of their offices, anecdotal feedback I have received from many law firm leaders and partners has consistently revealed that foreign offices, with some exceptions, are money losers, or, at least, are less profitable than many of their domestic offices. The big players at the top of the Am Law 100, that have firmly identified themselves as global forces, and have the resources to support that, can normally shrug that off, as carrying lower performing offices is a cost of doing business if they want to maintain their international positioning.

If one goes farther down the list of the Am Law 100, and even into the Am Law 200, you might arch an eyebrow or two when you see the locations of some of the foreign offices of those firms—not just in the most popular top-tier countries and markets, but in some secondary and tertiary areas, also.

If those types of offices are, in fact, causing a firm to bleed money, and there is no business justification that offsets that loss, maintaining those offices will become very difficult in the midst of the financial recession, if not depression, that we may experience for quite some time.  The partners who are driving revenue in the firm are likely to have little tolerance for having their compensation reduced because of underperforming offices that may not be essential to a firm's operation and future.

Moreover, and this is stated apolitically, it is readily apparent that a strong sense of nationalism has taken hold in various places around the globe and this has come into play in countries' responses to the pandemic. Query as to what impact that may have on this scenario and whether lawyers in foreign countries may also have a diminished interest in working in a U.S.-based law firm, as the allure may no longer be so bright.

I really hope I am wrong about this one, as I would hate to see others, no matter where they are located, lose jobs, but I do feel that this will be a pressure point for firms that over-expanded, especially abroad.

• Compensation systems will be tweaked, if not overhauled.

It is no secret that traditional, subjective law firm compensation systems have increasingly been placing more weight on originations. The 2008-2010 recession was a major impetus, as revenue was king and, despite the great bull market of the past 10 years, not much changed in that regard. Expect this trend to be amplified moving forward.

Subjective firms will still reward past performance and intangible contributions. They also will support key partners who are building new practices or are otherwise taking on strategically important initiatives for the firm. Nonetheless, in times of crisis, like the pandemic that has engulfed us, revenue keeps the lights on and feeds mouths, so I fully expect that factor will be weighed even more heavily as we move forward.

Tweaking compensation systems in law firms can require heavy lifting; radically overhauling these methods can require Herculean effort. Don't be surprised, though, if you see some firms, albeit just a modest number, consider, if not incorporate parts of objective criteria into their systems.

Objective systems have been derided by some (improperly, in my opinion) as "eat what you kill" plans that do not promote, among other things, collaboration, and are overly focused on production (as if that is an evil)! In fact, many firms that use such systems have carefully crafted plans that reward behavior—including sharing of work—that are an integral part of the firm's culture and thus are embraced by the firm's lawyers.

Those attorneys cherish knowing at any point in the year, how much they will be making (in large part) and not having such determinations left to the auspices of a compensation committee. The firm is also protected—and this is highly attractive in tough times—by only having what is paid out to a partner as base (or a draw) at risk. If that partner doesn't perform above that level, he/she won't earn any more, whereas a counterpart in a subjective firm who underperforms, may still be paid way above his/her base or draw. A partner who misses the mark in the objective firm will not be happy about making less, but should be highly motivated for the next year and should take solace in knowing that his firm should be in a much sounder financial position because of how it allocated its compensation dollars.

Shifting from a subjective system that may have been ingrained over many generations is not done lightly, so I don't expect many instant converts. Nonetheless, some of the core objective concepts could begin to take root in subjective firms. I do know that a number of younger partners I have placed, along with some more seasoned attorneys, have shown a lot of interest in joining firms with objective systems, with the existence of such a system being a deciding factor in some cases.

I can also predict, with 100% certainty, that members of compensation committees in subjective firms and their senior management would be thrilled if an objective system were put into place, if they felt it could work in their firms. The number of hours they expend during compensation season is the stuff of legend, as firms take the process very seriously. Recapturing those hours, and even converting some of them into billable work, would not only restore some of their sanity, but also would increase firm profitability margins!

• Lateral partners/groups and law firm combinations will proliferate (again).

While recruiters who focused on lateral associates unfortunately faced Death Valley Days in the early stages of the Great Recession, those of us who do partner/group work (and law firm M&A) were perpetually busy. Partners with good practices were in high demand and some target firms, which historically had rejected merger/combination inquiries, were much more interested (and ended up doing deals) during that downturn. I wish I could attribute this to keen business savvy and prescience; rather, it was more of a matter of being in the right practice area at the right time. I can attest that it already feels like déjà vu all over again.

Firms that are financially sound and were willing to expend capital and make investments, flourished during the Great Recession. While competitor firms were hemorrhaging lawyers and were understandably focusing more on internal matters, those better positioned firms scooped up some great lawyers and firms, which were transformative acquisitions. I anticipate this happening yet again, as there are some highly acquisitive firms that are ready to capitalize on good opportunities.

Cracks in the foundations of firms tend to become schisms, and fault lines can trigger quakes in tough times. These structural issues can be the reason why some lawyers move in down times or why firms decide to explore combinations. While loyalty to a firm is admirable, it has to be weighed along with what's best for one's clients, your support team of lawyers and staff, and, quite frankly, your family (and those of your team), in what is admittedly a complex calculus. Partners who do the math and conclude that it favors a move should find many good suitors.

The challenge is that virtually no lawyer who is alive (unless she is a wunderkind who started practicing as a teenager during the 1968 pandemic or just lateralled in the past few weeks) has made a move in the midst of this type of seismic event. The already vexing aspect of projecting portables will become even more complex, as will be the structuring of deals. However, experiences learned during the '08 recession, along with large dollops of creativity, should enable all involved to surmount those challenges.

Frank Michael D'Amore is the founder of Attorney Career Catalysts, http://www.attycareers.com, a Pennsylvania-based legal recruiting and consulting firm that focuses on law firm mergers and partner placements. He is a former partner in an AmLaw 200 firm, general counsel in privately held and publicly traded companies, and vice president of business development. He can be reached at [email protected].