Should I Go to CLOC? And Is Remote Work Disappearing?
Live Webinar Today at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific
The short answer is I sure hope not (I mean remote work ending, not my seemingly unrelated question about CLOC). For the longer answer you’ll have to sign up for my webinar today with legal department veterans. Here is the link to register
Now let me tell you how this is all related to this year’s CLOC conference taking place in Vegas at the Bellagio Hotel between May 9-12. CLOC is the one of the biggest gatherings of all legal ops professionals — think CES for #legaltech. A head of legal ops will often be making decisions about technology procurement inside legal departments. The implementation of LegalMation at Walmart for example was led by their then head of legal ops Tariq Abdullah, who is now with Tyson Foods. As someone who invests in #legaltech startups and whose business is helping others do the same, you would think this conference would be a no brainer for me. And, in years past, 2017, 2018 and 2019 I was all over CLOC. I even threw the first legal ops cabana party in 2018. (This year, CLOC wisely bought all the cabanas so that vendors couldn’t backdoor a sponsorship by contracting directly with the hotel).
Here’s my current status: I have a ticket to this year’s conference, but I still haven’t decided if I’m going and here is WHY.
Over the last two years when I stopped traveling and going to conferences, I didn’t lose any business. In fact my business has grown more than 2X year over year. I’m able to develop and cultivate relationships from my office in Tel Aviv without flying 1-2 times a month like I used to do. Is Zoom as good as in-person? No, but it’s pretty great.
Plus, I didn’t realize what a toll traveling was taking on me and my family until I stopped. So, now that the pandemic isn’t preventing conferences from taking place, I’m really not sure I want to slip back into old, bad habits.
For me, bad habits means “commuting” all around the world to see clients and attend industry events. And I call it bad habits because, as the last two years has shown me, I don’t really NEED to go to conferences. I’ve found some of the most cutting edge startups, kept up with industry trends and met regularly with my clients WITHOUT having to travel. I’m sure I would enjoy going to CLOC (and I’ll probably end up going), but it’s feeling disingenuous to tell myself that I NEED to be there or that the benefits of getting on a plane outweigh the costs of asking my wife to take care of four kids by herself while she helps run a telemedicine company. (←how #remotework is that!!?)
A lot of people I speak to are having a similar struggle right now with “Return to Work.” They know in their heart of hearts that they were able to be highly productive not going into the office. And now, a full two years removed from the original lockdowns, they’re being asked to get on a bus, train or traffic laced highway to make their way back into the office. Maybe their boss is telling them they have to come in, maybe their boss no longer comes into the office and doesn’t care or maybe they’re going to look for employment elsewhere? So, is remote work disappearing? Click on the link below to register for today’s webinar 1am Eastern/10am Pacific sponsored by Axiom. Even if you can’t make it live, Axiom will send it to you afterwards to watch on demand.
https://event.on24.com/.../1C606A1AF0A78FB241B10DD4F96B32C7