Team size: Eight

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

When the pandemic hit Germany in 2020, I was still working with a different company. Almost overnight, we needed to adjust to remote work. That was drastic but by far not as severe as what followed. In 2021, I changed company and joined WorkMotion. I was the company’s first and only lawyer and started working fully remotely without meeting anyone in person. The company had no physical office. We counted only around 30 employees, and everybody was located across the globe. We started building a business the typical start-up way, but this time as a globally distributed team. My first team member was based in Vietnam. She had formerly worked in the UK and had a top UK legal education, but during the pandemic, she moved back to her home country with her family. Together we recruited additional team members globally and, over time, became a team of eight outstanding legal counsel from numerous countries like Italy, Egypt, Vietnam, Germany, and South Africa. Since then, we have only met in person once for a workshop in Berlin. The overall process of recruiting and building the team, growing together as a group, and digging ourselves through daily work, happened behind a computer screen. I find it quite magical that we created a team that performs exceptionally well and is highly valued in the company. We genuinely care for each other. Before the pandemic, I would have thought that this was only possible when people met in the real world, but the new reality taught me otherwise. It worked really well.

How has the pandemic changed my work as a general counsel?  You would believe 100%, but concretely I do not think so. Did we meet in Google Meet and Zoom before the pandemic? Yes. Did we document our work precisely to enable async work? Yes. As human beings, did we need to care for each other, be empathetic, and support each other during difficult times? Absolutely. The difference between pre-pandemic times and today is that human relationships need to be established and grow in a technological environment and the absence of personal meetings by the coffee machine in the office. The proposition nowadays is that in pandemic times, you need to dedicate way more time to the social aspects of your team. But could it be that this has always been the case and we simply missed dedicating sufficient time to that aspect during pre-pandemic times? I tend to believe so. In any case, my work has indeed become more that of a personal mentor than that of a leader or manager in the classic sense.