Let’s get down some practicalities of running a home office…
Most lawyers work from home from time to time however will it’s possible to cope with this on an ad hoc basis, working with a laptop on the kitchen table or on your lap sitting in an easy chair while dealing with a few emails on an evening or over a weekend, this arrangement is not going to work when you are trying to replicate a full-time 9-til-5 working experience. (And yes I know in reality most lawyers can only dream of being able to go home at 5pm!)
Ideally you need a dedicated workspace – a home office – complete with a desk and an adjustable office-type chair you can adjust to a comfortable position for prolonged sitting. Another good reason for having a home office is if you have children of school age who are now on an extended furlough, you need to be able to escape from them to concentrate – especially if you will be needing to make and take sensitive phone calls.
“Nobody is going to be coming to stay with you so convert the spare bedroom/guest bedroom into an office.”
Now some of you will already have the luxury of a home office, for others you may need to make creative use of existing space. For example, with everyone now effectively on lockdown, nobody is going to be coming to stay with you so convert the spare bedroom/guest bedroom into an office. Another option is to work from your garden shed or summer-house – at least the weather is getting warmer and all you need are some extension cables and an electric heater. Remember hardware shops are still open and Amazon is still continuing to take and deliver online orders.
And, about that laptop. It’s not an ideal device for prolonged periods of work but most machines will allow you to add on an external monitor (so you have a bigger and more comfortable viewing area) and a full size external keyboard. Once again Amazon is your friend as high street PC and electronics shops are shut. If you work for a larger firm you should already have remote access to the firm’s computer network for accessing and storing files. If you don’t, I’d invest in a backup external hard drive – you can never make enough backups – and even a cloud storage service like Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. More on that later…