Coming out of Covid: Remote working and injury claims

It is hard to believe that almost 2 and a half years have passed since the country first went into lockdown following the start of the Covid 19 pandemic. Working practices have changed dramatically since that time, but as we continue cautiously to return to the office, face to face meetings and other old ways of working, albeit for most people as part of a new hybrid working model, real advancements have been made in the way we work and in my opinion, the main benefactors are our clients.

Injury and Medical Claims early in the Covid Pandemic

In the Anthony Gold Injury and Medical Claims (IMC) department, we represent a wide range of very seriously injured clients, ranging from clients with traumatic brain injuries, to amputations, to complex regional pain syndrome and functional neurological disorders. Very often, our clients suffer from very poor mobility and in the most extreme of cases, no mobility at all and this makes face to face meetings particularly difficult.

Early on in the pandemic, I would arrange Zoom video conference calls with clients and I quickly learned that for the most part, my clients found them preferable to coming into the office to see me or me travelling to see them at home. We suddenly had a great deal more flexibility in terms of setting up meetings at much shorter notice than normal and one of the things I have discussed at length with clients engaging in these meetings and which I have found they particularly appreciate is being able to conduct the meeting from the comfort of their own home and in some cases, in their pyjamas! Many clients have told me how much more comfortable they have felt conducting meetings in this way.

Change for the better

I personally believe that Covid accelerated a way of working that was already on the horizon, but which was perhaps still a good 5 to 10 years away, maybe even more. As a business, we had already started to go towards a paperless office environment before Covid hit us, but with all solicitors being forced to work exclusively from home in early 2020, we had no option but to go entirely paperless much quicker than we had been planning to do.

Running the sort of high value, serious injury claims that we deal with at Anthony Gold does involve a great deal of paperwork, but in this modern era, this is all paperwork that can easily be sent remotely and securely. The days of law firms having room after room of shelving crammed full of paper bundles and medical records are on the way out, as we turn to a much more modern and efficient system of scanning all documents onto our computers and consequently being able to move them between recipients at the click of a mouse. This of course is also so much better for the environment.

One of the major advancements in what is traditionally a very old-fashioned profession has been the manner in which the Court have adapted to this new way of working. Gone are the days of having to file original hard copy documents with the Court, now you can be sitting at home, electronically sign a document and then e-file it at the High Court in an instant.

Pros and cons of remote working

Remote working has also seen a huge increase in productivity, which in turn enables solicitors to be far more proactive in progressing claims for their clients. For example, on days when I commute into the office, I am travelling for 2 and a half hours in total. On days when I am working from home, I spend those 2 and a half hours working instead, which culminates in a far more productive day. This in turn enables me to really stay on top of my workload and provide the best level of service that I possibly can to every single one of my clients.

Of course, there is also always the temptation to check your emails of an evening with your workstation being in touching distance at all times, which in the Simons household has certainly led to one or two heated discussions about when to switch off, both literally and metaphorically! However, the reality is that we are all much more readily accessible in this new era of remote working and have learnt to get things done much quicker than we were perhaps able to do before.

Who benefits from remote working?

There is no doubt that remote working benefits everyone, but the main benefactors are definitely our clients. We are acting for people who have suffered often life-changing injuries and who are in need of a great deal of rehabilitation and help generally to get their lives back on track. Working in the midst of a pandemic has enabled us to introduce ways of working that have allowed us to expedite this process and put even more focus on getting our clients the help that they so urgently require.

For us, the claim process is not about getting from A to Z as quickly as we can. A personal injury claim represents a journey, one which we will be on with our clients for likely several years and at the end of which, we will have done all that we possibly can to ensure that our clients walk away from the claim with the best settlement possible.

However, the process itself is daunting, lengthy and for many people, very stressful and exhausting. What I have seen, however, over the course of the past 2 and a half years, is that we have been able to reduce the stress and disruption to our clients by changing the way in which we work and by doing simple things such as communicating largely by email, rather than post (thus removing the need for a seriously injured client to have to find their way to a post-box), or holding meetings and conferences over Zoom (thus removing the need for our clients to travel to and from meetings) and even processing payments (whether interim payments or final awards of damages) by BACS transfer as opposed to the old fashioned way of making payments by cheque.

These are all things that would have happened at some point or may have already started to happen, but a global pandemic forced our hand and in doing so, has improved upon the already high levels of service that we provide to all of our clients.