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The summer is beginning to wind down and our Law Firm Librarian Summer Camp series is coming to a close. What better way to end the summer than with one of camp's great traditions? Grab your snacks and your sweater, because it’s time to gather around the virtual campfire for a ghost story. This one is called “The Ghost of Print.”

During these unprecedent times, in-house legal teams are facing increasing pressure to be agile, nimble and responsive to the changing market dynamics. Whether the company is experiencing a hard hit to the bottom line or a sudden boom in demand, it is inevitable that nearly all law departments will be challenged to defend budget and staffing plans or do more with less to keep up with the evolving new normal.

The centralization of the procurement function within an organization, in which the purchase of goods and services is managed by a single department for all branches of the business, emerged in recent decades as a key operational strategy for increasing efficiency and reducing costs. This model makes it much easier for an organization to maintain policies and procedures that enable smarter buying across the company.

One of my favorite summer camp activities used to be making a lanyard – weaving together colored cording to create an accessory I could proudly display. Here, I attempt to weave together some of the cords from PLLIP’s recent Virtual Summit – Transformation 2020 and AALL’s 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting.

It has only been a few months since the thought of working anywhere was a fantasy reserved mostly for freelancers. We have all seen those ads showing lucky people working on the beach with their laptop, no stress, and a perfect work/life balance. No one could have imagined we would be faced with a global pandemic and, ultimately, the necessity to find a way to work remotely or not work at all.

Nearly four months have passed since COVID-19 changed the way we work. Legal organizations that initially focused on operationalizing their remote workforce and managing costs associated with temporary office closures are now facing the reality that, rather than a temporary situation, the pandemic-related changes may be deeper and have longer lasting impacts than initially contemplated. From HBR’s perspective as longstanding advisors to both law firms and law departments, this is a defining moment for the legal industry. To successfully differentiate themselves, organizations must seize and sustain the moment to pull the future forward, unlocking value and accelerating the legal industry’s evolution.

Though none of us are having the summer we expected, that doesn’t mean we stop transforming, growing and innovating. So, HBR decided to create a Summer Camp of learning through this blog post series, summarizing some of the industry events in which we are participating.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought unforeseen changes on many fronts, and law firms will never be the same. During the pandemic, firms have been learning important lessons about how to accommodate—and even thrive with—virtual work, how to reevaluate their legal service delivery and real estate footprint, and how to reallocate tasks to maximize their efficiency.

Traditionally, the legal industry has been reluctant to implement change; after all, lawyers adhere to a case law system built on hundreds of years of case precedent. To say that the industry has been plagued by change gridlock is an understatement.

For companies still conducting business remotely, the days leading up to the July 1 enforcement date for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will be busy -- putting in place essential elements to comply with the country’s most comprehensive privacy law and trying to anticipate amendments to come. We have written elsewhere about privacy data maps, typically manifest as tables detailing the information a company possesses and the path it travels through various systems before landing in its final storage location. But little attention has been paid to the data map’s counterpart: a company’s records retention schedule. While tools like a data map are important elements of successful CCPA compliance, an important preliminary step is to make sure your business has a strong foundation in place, including a functional records retention schedule.