ROBO-LAWYERS! ROBO-LAWYERS! - National

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Remote ...... . . control As knowledge workers, lawyers would seem to be ideal candidates for the coming age of telework. Solos and in- house lawyers have already benefited from telecommuting, but it may be some time before law firm lawyers shift their base of operations from the office to the home. By Patti Ryan The Internet age is here — albeit, several years after its most ardent prognosticators heralded its arrival. It eventually came bearing e-mail, the Web, and wireless everything, and its true believers foresee still more ways in which it will change life as we know it. Nobody disputes that the Net has had a huge impact on our personal and business lives — but it’s also fair to say that the full-scale knowledge economy is still on back-order. Actual progress always seems to arrive later than the most exciting predictions would have it. For example, thanks to Blackberrys, remote computer access and expanding wi-fi, telecommuting experts now are predicting the replacement of bricksand-mortar offices by home-based workspaces, with a concomitant revolution in how we work. It’s true that “telework” is coming, and in many places it’s already here — but it’s also true that there’s a long journey from being the exception to becoming the rule. For lawyers, this isn’t just an academic question. More than ever before, lawyers talk about wanting to spend more time at home and to put more “life” into the “work/life balance” equation. Is telecommuting part of the answer? Are law firms structured to operate with a home-based workforce? And will lawyers be among the early adopters of telecommuting or the last stubborn holdouts? Bob Fortier President, Canadian Telework Association, Ottawa “We’re seeing a clash between organizations that are still set up on the Industrial Revolution model, while we’re actually in the early years of the Information Revolution.” Les employeurs qui résistent au télétravail accordent une grande importance à la présence physique. Ils vivent toujours à l’époque de la Révolution industrielle. 36 NATIONAL OCTOBER · NOVEMBER 2006 MIKE PINDER
PAUL EEKHOFF The telework revolution Bob Fortier, president of InnoVisions Canada, a telework and flexible work consulting organization, is so confident about the decline of the old-fashioned office that he’s put money on it. Last year, he left his suburban Ottawa home and moved to Manotick, a rural community south of the city’s outskirts. From his home office there — surrounded by 100 or so towering pine trees that shade his enormous property — he works with people who live all over the world. The idyllic view is not the only benefit. Fortier forecasts that in the next 10 to 20 years, huge numbers of people will buy up land in “beautiful little towns” like his — likely driving up real estate prices in the process — because so many will have no need to commute regularly to a downtown office. The latest statistics, he says, indicate that some 60 percent of Canadians already have access to high-speed Internet. “Within a decade or two, it will be available everywhere in the country,” he says. By Fortier’s estimate, there are currently about 1.5 million teleworkers in Canada — about 10 percent of the total workforce — and they work an average of one or two days a week from OCTOBRE · NOVEMBRE 2006 www.cba.org Samantha Horn Stikeman Elliott LLP, Toronto “A lot of law is still very faceto-face. It would be difficult to work 100 percent of the time from home.” « La pratique du droit nécessite encore des rencontres en personne. Il serait difficile de travailler toujours à la maison. » home. “Most of the telework that takes place is informal,” he says. “I would say that more than half is based on private arrangements between the boss and the employee, where the company doesn’t have a telework program.” The legal angle As a profession, law lends itself easily to telework, says Fortier. “Information workers of all types are well-suited to telecommuting — report writers, journalists, policy researchers, anybody who does a large component of their work in front of a computer.” Yet not all information workers are employed by bosses who are comfortable with the notion of telework. Some managers and organizations still place considerable value on face time, and are suspicious of what workers are doing all day when they aren’t at their desks. Fortier chalks this resistance up to corporate anxiety fuelled by a cultural shift. “What we’re seeing now is a clash between organizations that are still set up on the Industrial Revolution model, while we’re actually in the early years of the Information Revolution,” he explains. Bricks-and-mortar organizations, with military- and pyramid-style management, are clashing with modern employees’ strong desire for flexibility. But employers have good reasons to embrace telework: it can reduce costs and absenteeism and improve productivity. “Teleworking two or three days a week increases productivity generally by some 15 to 20 percent,” says Fortier. “That’s been demonstrated over and over again in many studies, although it’s not an exact science. If you have a lot of teleworkers in your organization, each of whom is seeing an increase in productivity, then your corporate productivity increases.” And when employees are set up for telework, it can help companies cope with emergencies and disruptions. Fortier cites the 1998 ice storm that paralyzed parts of Ontario and Quebec, when some buildings were shut down for five or six weeks and all employees were sent home. “That’s a total business loss. Whereas had they been practising telework, a lot of those employees could have continued their work from remote locations.” 37
Page 1 and 2: October/November 2006 Octobre/Novem
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ROBO-LAWYERS! ROBO-LAWYERS! - National

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