1.
Maintaining Productivity in a
Remote Working Environment

2.
Maintaining Productivity in a
Remote Working Environment

3.
Joshua Lenon
LAWYER IN RESIDENCE AT CLIO
Attorney admitted in New York
@JoshuaLenon

4.
Agenda
• Managing Amidst Distraction
• Maintaining Your and Your Teams’
Productivity in WFH
• Communications and Workflows
• Questions and AMA

5.
Managing
Amidst Distraction

6.
3 Steps to Adapt Old Routines
1. Maintain routines
2. Create modified schedules
3. Swap in new ways to do old things

7.
8 Ways to Manage Your Team
While Social Distancing
1. Reset expectation
2. Stay in regular
touch
3. Support short
learning
4. Assign peer
buddies
5. Interpret tone
6. Model optimism
7. Update even with
no updates
8. Continually gauge
stress

8.
Maintaining Your and Your
Teams Productivity in WFH

9.
Speaker
Charity Anastasio, Practice
Management Advisor, American
Immigration Lawyers
Association
canastasio@aila.org
@charityanas

10.
Managing remote staff
and lawyers
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

11.
Perfect v. Good Enough
WFH Set Up
• Laptop
• Headset
• Phone forward
• Keyboard
• Monitor
• Good chair
• Quiet
• Boundaries/Transitions
• Printer
• Desktop scanner
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

12.
Stay on routine
• Get up early
• Dress for work
• Have three balanced meals
• Adjust schedule to fit
family’s needs
• Don’t answer the call of
the house when “on shift”
• Don’t answer the call of
work when “off shift”
• Respect yourself
• Be kind
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

13.
Time Blocking
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

14.
Policies you need now
(and sometimes relaxed)

15.
Allaying
employee
fears, Making
tough calls
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

16.
SixFifty App - https://www.sixfifty.com/

17.
Who Can WFH and Who Can’t?
LAWYERS RECEPTIONIST
LEGAL
ASSISTANT/CLERK
OFFICE
MANAGER
BOOKKEEPER IT SPECIALISTS

18.
Overcommunicate

19.
Unplug from the
media sometimes
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

20.
Use Video
Conferencing

21.
Tips for Functional Remote Meetings
Use it in conjunction with other tools
Have a backup solution, but work in 1-2 platform(s) as much as possible
Use names and address people directly
Take time in meetings to assess understanding
Reiterate assignments in chat and task management platform later

22.
Realities of
Cybersecurity
Right Now
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

23.
COVID-19 Inspired
Phishing Scams
• Remind staff
• Don’t fall for “verify your
remote access password”
types
• Don’t fall for ones preying on
your worst fears
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

24.
Write a Letter
About Your
Practice
Don’t leave your
family and clients
hanging
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

25.
Communications
and Workflows

26.
Maintaining Productivity
in a Remote Working
Environment
April 3, 2020

27.
Tucker Cottingham
Tucker Cottingham Tucker is an attorney and the
founder and CEO of Lawyaw, a modern document
and process automation solution for small and
medium sized law firms. Before Lawyaw, Tucker
helped build and manage one of the top rated
transactional law firms in San Francisco and is
currently on the board of the American Bar
Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center,
and Professional Development Division.
Speaker

28.
Topics
• Asynchronous Communication
• Accommodate difficult schedules
• Reduce opportunities for communication gaps
• Documenting Processes
• Empower co-workers
• Reduce impact of personnel changes
• Streamlining workflows
• Reduce overhead
• Reduce errors
• Resources
• The Holloway Syllabus on Remote Work
• Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Friedman
• 2020 State of Remote Work (Buffer)
Topics

29.
Asynchronous Communication
Work doesn’t happen at the same time for everyone
1. Clearprocesses, clear intentions
Communication stress grows exponentially the larger or more distributed you are. With
that, it’s significantly easier to mis-communicate or misinterpret.
Knowing the difference between urgent and important communication is crucial. Most things
aren’t urgent, but making them seem so will add a higher tax of anxiety that people who were
originally colocated probably didn’t feel before.
From *Rousseau Kazi, CEO Threads
2. Most things aren’t urgent.
Harder to be misunderstood when you write, it gives people time to read/think about what you said
versus react immediately,
3. Invest in your writing
Asynchronous Communication

30.
Urgent vs important
Real-time communication:
1. Urgent situations
2. Casual hangouts, catch-ups, and celebrations
3. Relationship building Asynchronous Communication
Urgent vs Important

31.
Documentation is Key!
Easy access to documentation avoids confusion
1. Choose your medium
Tools like “Notion” or other “wikis” make it easy to organize and
document internal processes. You can also use MS Word.
Take the time to run through the process with each employee to head off
confusion and any problems.
2. Create & distribute instructions
Things will not always go as planned, make sure to document steps remote
employees should take if they do encounter difficulties.
3. Anticipate problems
Documentation is Key!

32.
Streamline Repeatable Workflows
Spend your time on the most valuable tasks
1. Non-critical manual tasks
Remove any unnecessary manual work from your processes, such as
intake, routine document creation, collection of signatures
Remove any unnecessary obstacles for yourself and your co-workers.
2. Reduce opportunity for errors
Enables increased ability to delgate while maintaining your firm’s
reputation for high quality work.
3. Ensure consistency and quality
Streamline repeatable processes

33.
Modern Document Automation
1. Smart Templates
2. Journey-based creation process
3. Easily review changes and inputs
4. Integrates with other software
Modern Document Automation

34.
Smart Templates1. Smart Templates

35.
Journey Based Creation2. Journey-based creation process

36.
Reduce Time Spent Reviewing for Errors3. Easily review changes and inputs

37.
Integrate Existing Data4. Integrates with other software