As the coronavirus outbreak has continued to present more challenges for the legal sector, lawyers have to work harder to up their game while observing social distancing measures. Here’s how lawyers can keep themselves available for their clients in order to ensure everything still goes smoothly before and during the pandemic. 

The pandemic has accelerated many businesses to working around the clock, and this is no different for the lawyers as well. They have to be more accessible online, especially, in order to keep their clients informed and connected during this emergency time. Towards this direction, here are some recommendations lawyers can take to communicate with their clients about the social distancing policies and other public health matters during the pandemic.

1. Adding a webpage about your firm’s response to the COVID-19 virus.

You should have this webpage ready as soon as possible to highlight that your law firm is open for business, and explain how you are serving clients. This can be through telephone, video chat and conferencing, or other methods. Be firm about your word choices here, and make them feel secure should they need to find lawyers to help with any of their matters, they would feel safe to do so.

2. Setting up video chats and conferencing

If you choose to use video conferencing to connect with your staff or clients, try using Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Skype or Zoom. If you are a Mac and iPhone only office, it’s best to use Apple’s FaceTime, as it would be easier to synchronise between the devices used.

3. Avoiding meeting clients in public places

Before the pandemic, you may have enjoyed meeting clients at coffee shops or restaurants, and it would definitely have been easier that way. But it’s not as safe as it used to be to go to public places, so make it a point to only conduct in-person meetings at your office (if needed). Otherwise, just stick to video chats for better safety measures. 

If you do conduct meetings at your own office, chances are there are fewer people there than there would be in public. You won’t even have to take any public transportation for that matter (pun intended) too. Just hang in there for a while before you get to reexamine whether it’s safe to meet at your favourite places again. 

4. Implementing a health screening firewall

To keep everyone safe and to comply with the government’s SOPs in place, you need to implement new health-screening procedures at the office for essential employees or clients who need to come in. People who are experiencing signs of the virus, even if they haven’t tested positive, should work from home. This is to ensure that even though the working environments have been different, nothing changes when it comes to taking care of clients’ needs. 

You should also instil mandatory rules at the office to encourage people to stay safe and take precautions. Put up reminders for people to wash their hands often, and make hand sanitisers as well as masks readily available. These new procedures should remain in place even when this pandemic ends, since it’s always better to be safe than sorry, no?

5. Working on matters together through CoreMatter

CoreMatter is a cloud-based legal management software that helps lawyers work on the same goals, anywhere and at any time. In order to keep everyone on the same page, working on matters through the app could help to save time, promote team collaboration, and productivity – all in the efforts to ensure you’re making yourself available to work on your clients’ matters. 

In conclusion, it’s good noting that people still need legal services both before and during the pandemic (maybe even more so in the latter). Most lawyers are committed to helping their clients minimise disruptions to their businesses during the pandemic, and CoreMatter too shares the same values. 

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