Page 8 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2020

FEATURE
Remote Work
Bonnie W. David
The Embrace of
A small silver lining for parents in a pandemic
When I left the office on Friday, the 13th of March, around 6 p.m., the halls were empty — not atypical on a Friday evening, given the Delaware courts’ work-life balance guidelines set filing deadlines at 5 p.m. I typically work from home on Fridays, but I made it a point to come into the office that day to file a particularly hefty motion-to-dismiss brief in the Court of Chancery. When I left that evening, I had no idea that my next several dozen filings would all be done remotely.
6 DELAWARE LAWYER FALL 2020
As a senior litigation associate who practices primarily in the Court of Chancery, I do, on occasion, work long hours. Many of those hours are spent in the office, late at night or early in the morning. But as the mother of young children, over the past several years I also have worked many hours from home (or the homes of friends and family members, or, at times, the day care parking lot).
Despite lingering views about “face time” held by some senior members of the Bar, I’ve managed to do work that
I love and stay a constant presence for my two toddlers, thanks, in no small part, to my firm’s early adoption of remote technology. By working paper- less, logging onto the firm’s system remotely after my kids are in bed, and answering my office phone line at home through an application on my cell phone, I rarely miss a call or a bedtime, pandemic or not.
Even with all that practice, the weeks following office closures were dark. Lack of child care, combined with pressure to maintain “business as usual” (and