Law firms with offices in Hong Kong have much to teach their colleagues across the globe about how to deal with the coronavirus as they are now forced to reexamine how their offices should operate amid a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases. Reports Law.com
Here’s the introduction to their report
In Hong Kong, where the coronavirus outbreak is now entering its third month, law firms are struggling with a choice: how much should they keep their offices open?
For a brief while, the virus transmission appeared to be well contained in Hong Kong, where local government had imposed strict border controls and quarantine measures early on against travelers from high-risk areas such as mainland China and Korea. Until March 17, the highest number of additional new cases reported in one day in Hong Kong was 10, which at that point happened only on two occasions. In the first 54 days since Jan. 23, when Hong Kong started to report confirmed cases, there were 36 days of three new cases or fewer.
But last week, things took a turn for the worse. On March 18, Hong Kong reported 25 new cases and by last Friday, the number of new cases hit a record 48. The increase in new cases has remained high, with an average of 35 new infections recorded every day since Friday. Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong’s medical faculty, warned that the recent wave of people returning to Hong Kong from overseas could spark a second round of infections and that the city is now at its highest risk since the outbreak began.
This has resulted in changes to the process law firms had employed to resume full-time office operations. Many firms in Hong Kong have kept their offices open since late January, when people returned to work from the Chinese New Year break. They alternated their operations as the situation dictated: they let people choose whether they wanted to work in the office or remotely when the outbreak appeared more contained, and strongly encouraged people to work from home, keeping only an essential team on-site, when transmission risk increased.
But until last week, an increasing number of employees were opting to work in the office and law firms said office attendance was on the rise.
“The office did not close for one single day. We had adopted a flexible working strategy since Chinese New Year,” said Stephen Kitts, Eversheds Sutherland’s Hong Kong-based Asia managing partner, who added that the number of staff coming into the office had gradually increased.
