Practical Law Future Forum round table: the impact of hybrid working on early-career development and progression

For some time, we have wanted to build a further layer into the Practical Law In-House Consultation Board to capture the perspective of lawyers in the early stages of their career.

This autumn we launched the Practical Law In-house Future Forum, which brings together early-career lawyers seeking to improve the experience of working in the legal profession.

The Forum is led by a Steering Committee, whose members (see Help and information note, Practical Law In-house Future Forum Steering Committee) met for the first time recently to discuss their experiences of hybrid working, their views on how it can impact on early-career development and progression, and how senior lawyers can help their more junior colleagues to stay positive and productive - as well as make the transition from understanding the law to applying it.

The abrupt shift to remote working that took place with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic signalled a significant change for the legal profession, traditionally characterised by a culture of visibility and, in many cases, "face time".

More than two years later, remote working appears to have become a permanent feature of professional life, with firms and companies adopting a variety of hybrid working structures. This has raised a number of issues for the legal profession specifically, from how to adequately supervise and train lawyers working remotely, through maintaining client confidentiality when working outside the office, to how to switch off when there is no separation between where you work and where you live.

A large part of Committee members' professional lives so far has taken place in this hybrid environment. The majority continue to work in flexible structures, most of which involve a set number of days or percentage of time in the office.

We were interested in how our SteerCo members viewed the experience of hybrid working:

Overall, members did not feel that hybrid working had negatively impacted their own career progression. However, they did recognise that remote working could be an issue for some, particularly those who might be more introverted by nature, as well as new joiners to a team or a business, or employees trying to carve out a place for themselves in a large team.

They shared their methods for keeping in touch with the team and their managers and making sure not only that their work was visible but also that some boundaries were drawn between work and their other priorities, including studying. These included:

Being proactive as an employee can only take you so far if your manager does not also actively adapt their approach.

Committee members were positive about the steps their own managers had taken to integrate them into the legal team and the business, even in a virtual work environment. Some managers had, for example, been clear that ad hoc calls at short notice could be accommodated, should they be necessary to progress a matter or deal with a query.

When it came to career progression, Committee members were, in more than one case, pleased to have been given a clear and bespoke framework against which to measure their professional development and to assist in closing skills gaps, along with a programme of regular check-ins to track progress.

Managers who recognised the difficulty new joiners to a team might face in forming relationships with their legal colleagues or business stakeholders were also highly praised by SteerCo members.

One was grateful to their manager for setting up a series of short (five minute) introductory calls with key stakeholders on their behalf. The manager joined each call for the first two minutes and then left to allow their junior colleague to begin to forge an independent relationship with the stakeholder.

Another Committee member found it helpful on joining their team that everyone came into the office for the first two weeks of work, to help in settling in and forming relationships, before reverting to the more usual hybrid pattern. Regular virtual team catch-ups and randomised "speed dating" style introduction calls were also mentioned as helpful ways of reintroducing the social element of the workplace, when the nearest water cooler is miles away.

Members agreed, though, that the main challenge faced in the hybrid working environment was the reduced opportunity to absorb professional skills and know-how from more experienced colleagues.

Developing understanding of stakeholders' concerns or the pros and cons of different strategic approaches is more difficult when interactions must be scheduled. Junior members of the team may feel reluctant to ask for a busy supervisor's time simply to ask for explanations of an approach, and are not able to benefit from sitting in on their senior colleagues' discussions of a matter: both opportunities that present themselves more naturally when sharing an office.

Our Committee members described steps taken by their managers to add that extra layer of training and development, which they felt had been extremely helpful:

As our SteerCo pointed out, such steps can have the additional benefit of making the legal team more able to cover holiday absences, as well as training up new joiners faster and giving them the confidence and context to be able to apply the law.