On Monday 3rd October, in sponsorship with Kim Technologies, Absolute and Tessian, ILTA hosted its third ‘Women in Legal Technology event’. The aim of these events is to build a community for women in Legal Technology. The topic for this event was work/life balance in this post-Covid world and how to make hybrid-working work for you and your teams.
The event was hosted by Nina Gratrick (Global Services Technology Delivery Director for Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP); she was joined by a panel that included Melody Easton (VP of Marketing at Kim Technologies), Annette Brown (Head of IT at Milbank), Kerry Angel (Head of IT Service Delivery at Withersworldwide) and Joanna Cassey (General Counsel at Tessian).
The evening started with a warm welcome from Nina and a request to action 3 things following the event - 1. Follow ILTA, 2. Login and use the ILTA resources and 3. Make at least one new LinkedIn connection that evening – put aside any nerves and use these opportunities to make new friends! A Q&A session then took place with the panelists sharing their experiences of their work/life balance post Covid. There were positive experiences, such as being able to work from home had enabled people to spend more time with their families and working when it fits in with home life instead of the 9-5 but also some negative where people missed out on the social side of coming into the office and drinks after work! It seemed to be very much dependent upon where you were in your lifecycle as to the positive or negative of the change. Some of the younger generation of attendees expressed some anxiety about going into the office as they had become so used to working from home.
The session then moved onto discussing hybrid working. The entire panel agreed that they had to adapt their style for managing people when working from home. They stated that it was much harder to ‘read the room’ with a mix of people at home and in the office. One panel member explained that in the past it was ‘one size fits all’ but now that has changed and people can be more open and honest about their need for flexible working. Each panelist was then asked to provide a “takeaway”:
- Lead by example
- There is not a ‘one size fits all’ – everybody and every company is different
- Be honest
- Listen to your team
The evening concluded with wine, nibbles and networking!
A special thanks to Nina for organising the panel and topic, Annette for hosting us at Milbank LLP and finally our sponsors – Kim Technologies, Absolute and Tessian!