Serendipitous Run-Ins Versus Comforts of Home: What People Miss and Don't Miss About the Office - The Legal Intelligencer

Joseph J. Centeno, shareholder and co-chair of the firm's Labor, Employment, Benefits & Immigration section, is quoted in The Legal Intelligencer article, "Serendipitous Run-Ins Versus Comforts of Home: What People Miss and Don't Miss About the Office."

What you sort of don't get in the technology is the impromptu personal contact with your team or your clients. This is human contact that you don't really think about. You can get everything done in tech. You can have a videoconference, and you can share documents. But everything is so scheduled. You don't have this in-person flexibility of a serendipitous or impromptu connection with people. I think it's also true in big group meetings. When you get all your people together, usually you have the ability to have little impromptu side conversations, where not everybody is listening. I miss that sort of social professional personal kind of connection that happens only in person.

I don't miss the commute time. And I find that because people aren't traveling and clients aren't traveling and no one is commuting anymore, folks have been more available and clients have greater availability to connect because you don't have to go anywhere and they don't have to go anywhere. I would always have face-to-face meetings with people and my clients so I was significantly traveling. But that takes a lot of time. It's great that they're still available, but there's no expectation of travel.