Legal challenges of remote working with Tara Vasdani

In the debut episode of Off Mute, Remote CEO Job van der Voort speaks to one of the world’s top experts in remote employment law, Tara Vasdani. 

As the principal lawyer and founder of Remote Law Canada, Tara specializes in employment law, with a particular focus on remote working. She aims to show how proper corporate policies can facilitate remote work and digital nomadism, highlighting what companies need to know before hiring remotely. 

In this conversation, Job and Tara discuss how digital nomadism provides unique legal challenges for employers, including tax codes, information security, or health and safety compliance. They discuss the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on law, ushering in a new era of “Zoom court” in Canada. And Tara recalls becoming the first Canadian lawyer to serve a statement of claim through Instagram! 

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Episode transcript

Job: Hi, I'm Job, and this is Off Mute, the podcast that explores managing distributed teams across the globe.

Here at Remote, we want to help you and your company get the most out of your teams no matter where they are or how many countries you offer. That's why each episode we're talking with senior leaders about how remote working has improved their operation, and some of the challenges they faced along the way.

In this episode, we're talking to founder of Remote Law Canada, Tara Vasdani. Enjoy the show.

Welcome to our first episode of our brand-new series, Off Mute, from Remote. And I couldn't be more excited to be launching this new show.

Many companies today are fully remote workplaces and others have distributed teams dotted all over the world. Here at Remote, we think going beyond your borders is a great way to source the best talent, and that's why we help companies with all stages of hiring abroad, whether it's tax codes, legal compliance, benefits, and so on.

But we also know that remote working has its challenges too. So, this show is all about inviting guests with real experience of distributed ways of working. We want to learn from them, share tips on best practices, and generally improve our understanding of remote working, whether we're talking finance, HR, ops, or legal.

Which brings us nicely to our very first guest of the series. I'm really excited to welcome Tara Vasdani onto the show. Tara is the principal lawyer and founder of Remote Law Canada, a law firm specializing in civil litigation, employment law, real estate, and remote work.

It's been awarded Employment Law Firm of the Year by Canada's Prestige Awards for the last three years. And Tara herself has been nominated on five separate occasions as one of 25 most influential lawyers in Canada.

Tara has also been recognized as an influential advocate for remote working by both the AAE and LinkedIn, and she's also the first Canadian lawyer to serve a statement of claim through Instagram.

Serving a claim through...Instagram?

Job: Tara, delighted to have you on the show. We have to start with that last point.

Tara: Everybody always wants to start with that last part!

Job: How did you end up serving a claim through Instagram?

Tara: So, if I want to tie sort of where I'm at now with remote work and my advocacy for remote work to that story, I would say that it was really the autonomy and the creativity that my firm allowed me to exercise as a young lawyer. I was working at a firm, I had only been a lawyer for seven months, and essentially, we had a claim.

We were working for the insurance company for a cottage. And so, a couple of kids had gone on a long weekend, rented this cottage, decided to have a little bit too much to drink, went into the storage room where they stored some jet skis, snowmobiles, et cetera, stole some of the snowmobiles, damaged them, and then later, the next day, checked out.

Eventually, the insurance company paid out the cottage property, and later stepped into the shoes of the cottage to go after the perpetrators. When I was trying to find these kids to serve them with the claim, it was nearly impossible.

So, I had looked on Facebook, LinkedIn, found one of their last known workplaces, phoned the workplace. They didn't know who she was. I was essentially, on this wild goose chase. We had even hired a private investigator to go and find her.

So, eventually, I went on Instagram and one night just at home decided to search her up, and I found her. In Canada, when you're trying to serve a claim, you have to do it personally, and that's the reason that you hire private investigators, you try to find out her workplace, et cetera.

And so, in this case, I actually had to get an order from the court saying that I could serve this claim through a direct message on Instagram, and it actually ended up being successful.

So, I went ahead and I served the claim through Instagram because I had court order, and now, I still get emails from judges, from other lawyers looking for this precedent because we're in a common law system, they can use it to serve other defendants in the future.

Job: I find that an amazing story. Now, law students will be taught well, you either serve it in person or through Instagram. That's the precedent we have and that's what we'll have to rely on.

Tara: Exactly, exactly. No, it's amazing. I think it's so cool that I was really able to exercise my creativity and autonomy in doing that. And I think because I had a taste of that, it slowly brought me to taking more agency and opening up my own practice.

The founding of Remote Law Canada

Job: So, you founded Remote Law Canada in 2019. And as people always tell me, well, how did you start doing anything before the pandemic that was called remote? What was the journey for you?

Why Remote Law Canada and why before anybody else thought remote working was a thing?

Tara: I know, isn't that funny? Everybody associates remote work with Covid-19, but there were plenty of us before then.

So, for me, I had been at home, I watched a documentary from The Economist on a digital nomad couple. And at first, it was just completely practical. I called up my then boyfriend, who's now my husband, and I said, “Well, how do we do this? You know, how do I travel the world and work from different jurisdictions?”

And of course, it's different when you're a lawyer because laws are very local. And so, I had gone back to the editor of Canadian Lawyer Magazine and I just pitched an idea. I said, “Can I write an article about some of the legal issues that impact these digital nomads?”

And so, I wanted to determine what employment legislation applies to them. How is their insurance handled? How do you deal with taxation? How do you deal with breach of contract or if the client has some sort of dispute with the company, and the employee is out of the jurisdiction of the employer?

And so, I had written this article and so from there, started reaching out to every single remote work advocate. And this was back in 2018, and sending them my article. So, I was still working at a firm when I had written this article.

So, from there, I started to get more involved. All of a sudden, I was developing remote work employment agreements, remote work independent contractor agreements, employee handbooks, and this sort of suite of employment documents. And that was going to be an offering that I was going to offer to clients across the globe.

You know, slowly this didn't meet the interest of the firm and it really came to a point where I had to decide whether I was going to stay or if I was going to go. So, in May, 2019, I decided to open up the firm and then less than a year later, we were hit with the COVID-19 pandemic. And those documents became incredibly important.

Job: That's an incredible story. I am really curious about the kind of cases that you come across.

The legal hurdles of digital nomads

Job: I wonder about these nomads, digital nomads.

If I'm an employer and somebody applies to my company and they say, “Well, I'm a digital nomad,” how should I treat that? How should I work with those people?

Tara: So, with nomads, I tend to tell my employer clients that the rule of thumb (sometimes they don't want to hear it, sometimes they're actually grateful to hear it) is that maybe you should hire them as a contractor.

It's just easier for you to manage them as an employee. They wouldn't be an employee, they would be a contractor. But from a liability perspective, a taxation perspective, anything really, if anything goes wrong between them and the client, them and you, it's much easier to hire them as a contractor.

Where the issue arises is when that digital nomad decides to hop from one country to the next to the next. And I'm sure that that's really what you're getting at.

So, in that case, that's again, why the contractor role is so important. But there's other issues. You have to think about liability, what happens if there's a workplace injury? What defines the workplace?

So, in Canada, we had a very interesting case. A judge in Quebec had actually ruled in favor of an employee that was working from home, but working for the airline, Air Canada. The employee had essentially tripped and fell down her staircase while at home while on her lunch break.

She was denied workplace insurance because the company argued that she was on her lunch break. The Quebec judge actually ruled in her favor and said that the company had mandated her hours of work, had mandated her lunch break. And so, she did have access to worker's compensation, and she was covered by the insurance policy of the workplace.

She was able to take short-term disability or take worker's comp. So, that's the issue as well. When you have a nomad that's sort of jumping from jurisdiction, well, if they have a workplace injury, are they even going to be covered by the workplace insurance policy?

And so, really, I think at that juncture, it's really important for the employee/nomad to take accountability. And so, what we attach to many of our employment contracts are health and safety checklists and a lot of checklists that include some obligations on the employee to report.

So, within that checklist you would have, where are you going to be working from, how long will you be working from there? How many head office attendances are required? What are your hours of work?

So, again, when you're dealing with insurance and risk, if the employee thinks that they can kind of work whenever they want during the day, but you're under the impression that they're going to work from nine to five, if they have an injury at 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM, are they eligible for the workplace insurance policy?

And so, I would say that what employers should do is sort of set it up beforehand. So, if you know you're going to be dealing with a nomad employee, and even if you don't, as long as you provide some accountability on their part where they have to report to you stating where they're going to be, what hours they're going to be working, if they have any travel plans, et cetera — you may be okay to attempt to deal with them as an employee.

But if they're going to be sort of hopping around, my rule of thumb is always go ahead and make them a contractor.

Job: That's very interesting.

The issue of contractor misclassification

Job: We challenge organizations, and the challenge that they give us is, well, we don't want to have a lot of contractors because we’re worried about misclassification.

Even for us, as an employer of record, what we see is like we're going to hire you as an employee country A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. It's got to be really difficult for everybody involved, including the employee themselves as they have to essentially pay taxes in each one of these jurisdictions, which is a huge challenge.

Tara: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm totally with you with the misclassification. I mean, that was one of the largest cases we had in Canada. It was actually for Uber drivers.

So, believe it or not, the Supreme Court of Canada eventually found that Uber drivers were employees under the law. And so, the employer, which was Uber, had to go back and back pay all of the employer taxes.

And really, the misclassification that occurs between contractor and employee is significant because it never depends, as you know, on what the agreement says. It depends on whether or not you've met the factors that identify with independent contractor or employee in the applicable jurisdiction.

So, I can completely see how that can be a challenge. And sometimes one of the ways to entice some of these contractors to be contractors is to allow them flexibility, to allow them to work with other employers or with competitors.

That's really one of the surefire ways to guarantee the independent contractor and employer relationship. And some of the ways that we tell our clients to maybe assist the employers with this is, well, you should also tell them that they'll be able to claim certain expenses.

So, that's something that you can't do as an employee, but you can do as an independent contractor. So, if they're going to be moving around, of course, they can claim their travel, they can claim their laptop, they can claim some of the tools that they're using to complete their job duties and responsibilities.

And that may make it attractive to avoid a lawsuit where later on, they're saying that they were an employee.

Job: I guess what is happening in some way is that previously, you had this really clear delineation between what is work when you're at the office, at the work site, and what is out of office, right?

And now, that really begins to blur.

Changing employer responsibilities in remote work

Job: One thing I wonder about is the responsibilities of the employer. Where you talked about like, well, what are they liable for? What is happening in a case of an accident? But I can imagine it goes even further than that.

Like one thing that is always on the back of my mind is that what I don't want is the people that work for me, I don't care where they work, but I don't want them to be sitting down hunched over their laptop all day in like in a kitchen chair, not very ergonomically.

What are you seeing, what do you think is the future of this now that these lines are starting to blur?

Tara: So, I think definitely, this is where the health and safety checklist comes in. So, whenever I think ergonomic assessment, I think on the side of the employer, do you want to have a short-term disability claim on your desk?

And so, really, in every employment agreement, we include a health and safety checklist that asks the employee to speak to the ergonomics of their space. It also deals with things like confidentiality, privacy, does it have lockable doors and windows, who has access to the space in the event that there's any sort of breach of confidentiality.

And then we also go further, we ask for any trip hazards. So, that was an interesting one because during the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools closed down. So, all of a sudden, you had children's toys all over the floor.

And so, the employee has to report, is it free and clear of trip hazards because you don't want to be in a situation where all of a sudden, they have a trip and fall and now, they're claiming short-term disability or long-term disability.

And so, really, we asked them to take photos of their workspace. So, you want to ensure that it's ergonomically sound prior to. Now, the employee, if they claim short-term disability or worker's comp, they're going to claim it.

Now, how protected will you be with that health and safety checklist? It's really in the event that the disability provider or worker’s comp chooses not to provide the compensation. At that point, you've sort of got this bulletproof health and safety checklist that says, “Well, they told me that it was safe.”

Because the employee's next step is often, “I'm going to sue my company and the insurer to ensure that I get access to these funds.” And so, ergonomics is definitely worrisome, but I think that, again, shifting some of the accountability and the responsibility onto the employee is important for the employer to avoid some of those situations.

Job: You don't think that there is an responsibility of an employer, for example, to provide an ergonomic workspace or like an ergonomic chair when somebody's working from home?

Tara: I absolutely do. So, what we're dealing with a lot right now since the Covid-19 pandemic is what I call temporary or emergency remote work.

So, you had a lot of brick-and-mortar offices that went ahead and just told people work from home. Take the laptop that you use at work and take it home and work from over there. And they didn't provide any accommodation because they are still refusing to believe that it's a permanent situation.

So, you have two very different types of employers. You have an employer that is 100% remote and is going to stay remote and has acknowledged that. Or you have a lot of these, “We're going to be hybrid or we're going to be flexible for the time being, and then eventually, we'll let you know what we're going to do.”

Those employers choose not to provide the tools like an ergonomic chair or infrastructure, like a larger screen, et cetera. Whereas the 100% percent remote companies, I think do have an obligation to create a safe workspace. That's an obligation that falls on any employer.

So, in Ontario for example, we have the Occupational Health and Safety Act. What does the act say? It says that the workspace has to be safe. So, in the same way that you would have to train an employee on climbing a ladder or doing any sort of physical labor to prevent injury, the same way you would have to set up the remote workspace to prevent injury.

So, from that perspective, I think to meet their occupational health and safety requirements, absolutely, it's an obligation of the employer to provide an ergonomically sound and safe space.

What we do with those hybrid/flexible employers, it remains to be seen. So, they're also going to have to think about, well, how many disability claims or workers' compensation claims am I going to be able to endure from my workforce before you decide to provide some of those tools and some of those advantages.

And so, I think that 100% percent remote employers, absolutely; provide the tools. It's your obligation as an employer to ensure a safe workspace. Hybrid and flexible, get on board.

Job: And so, if I start a new company, I have to worry about, well, are they locally compliant? I don't want to misclassify people, I have to make sure that they have a safe working space.

What are other considerations that new remote companies have to have when thinking about how are their employees going to work from home?

Tara: So, I think privacy is very important and confidentiality, information security. You have a lot of companies these days that are sort of using software on an employee's personal computer and software that they download on their personal cell phone.

And so, I think that you're raising the risk or increasing the risk related to privacy and security, and you're making it susceptible to breaches. So, as a small business, you sort of need to think less about the economics of providing the tools, and more so about information security.

And so, it's extremely important for a small business that's starting out as remote to think about providing some of those tools. Think about investing in the software that's really going to keep their information secure.

We've seen data breaches and privacy breaches left, right and centre over the last couple years and they're going to keep happening. And so, you don't want to be victim to these phishing scams or any sort of breach, and you should really be investing in that infrastructure.

And then of course, we've touched on insurance and risk, I think that's really important. Working with your insurer to ensure that any sort of remote work risk is covered by your policy.

So, again, working with the insurer to understand, well, if the employee has a slip and fall at home, what is my liability? What is the insurance policy cover? If the employee decides to travel (and that's the big one with the digital nomads), what is the applicable policy and what does that cover?

So, those are some of the other considerations I think that we need to take into account.

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Remote, because your location shouldn't dictate your success.

Now back to the show!

How can employers make the most of this moment?

Job: We focused a lot on what should you be careful with, what are things to avoid, how do you prevent insurance claims.

In your work working with different companies are there particular remote working practices or things that you have seen that surprised you in a positive sense?

Tara: Absolutely. So, as an advocate for remote work, I think it's very important to promote some of the advantages of remote working. And this morning, I couldn't help but think how incredibly motivated, well-balanced, and driven all of the remote work advocates that I've met truly are.

And I think that speaks volumes to their, quite frankly, work and life set up. They have better work-life balance, they're able to prioritize better. And so, they're able to sort of source their energy in the correct way where they're very highly motivated, they're very driven and they're very accomplished.

They can get things done, they're super organized. And it really all comes down to, as an employee, autonomy. That was something when I was talking about the Instagram story that I really appreciated, and it helped propel me forward.

So, I think when you're encouraging remote work and when people are working remotely, they've got more urgency, they've got more autonomy, they're working from home, they can better balance their schedule.

You really get the best of the best, because you're getting all output and all quality output while they're managing other things in their lives.

So, it's interesting, but I also just recently became a certified Pilates instructor. I have many people in the legal field that the assumption is you're working constantly. So, you wake up, you eat, live, sleep, breathe law.

And while I do that and I manage a firm, I still have time to balance other priorities and that was a priority for me. And so, I think it really speaks volumes to the efficacy of remote work and its potential.

Job: That's great. Yeah, I was going to ask you next what the impact on your own personal life has been to switch from a job that is typically in the office. I think a hundred percent of the lawyers I know, they work from the office, and they envision nothing else.

And so, at least you had the opportunity to become a certified Pilates instructor. What are the implications for you personally, if you don't mind sharing?

Tara: So, Covid-19 was actually very, very helpful for the courts and for our legal system. Of course, it was completely unhelpful in other ways, but I think in terms of taking a very ancient and archaic practice and making it much more modern, Covid-19 really helped to propel that forward.

So, we exclusively (and many people don't know this) are still in Zoom court, so we only have court on Zoom. I have attended hearings from Costa Rica, Dominican Republic.

Just in December, I stopped myself, and this is sometimes where remote work, you blur the lines between work and personal. I finally stopped myself from having a hearing while I'm away from my sister's wedding next month. We're going to be in Dominican Republic, and I think I just needed to decide to put my attention a hundred percent there.

But it's really done wonders for the legal system, whereas previously, everything had to be served in person. Now, you're serving, filing, proceeding online. So, all documents don't have to be filed at the courthouse. Everything is on, we call it case lines. The judge is viewing the documents online, you're going through them online. It's fantastic.

It's been a huge tree saver, a cost saver. And so, that has really made it incredible for me as a lawyer to continue to work remotely and advocate for remote work. I also find that clients really, really find it very accessible. You don't have to drive to the lawyer's office anymore, pay expensive parking, wait if they're in another meeting.

You just call me on your lunch break, you call me on your … I don't want to say weekend because I try to avoid that. You call me sort of when you're free, and if I don't answer the phone, I'm able to quickly text you and then I get back to you within a couple minutes, you can accomplish something else.

And so, I really think for lawyers, it's fantastic. It's really, really helped with building an efficient and accessible practice. I've had the opportunity of really increasing my personal relationships and making them much more valuable, and focusing on things that I enjoy outside of law.

But as a lawyer, I think that the technological advances and the ability to work remotely has really made our practice much more accessible to clients and much, much, much more efficient.

Job: I love to hear this. When we were starting our company and we have to set up all these entities everywhere in the world, and until March 2020, I was flying from country to country, opening up the entities and often flying then back a few weeks later to open a bank account, and signing things.

And it's the same thing that we see, is that, well, it's still highly bureaucratic, but at least, some of the bureaucracy can be dealt with from a distance. You don't actually have to be physically in person to be able to just open a bank account or start like initial entity that does nothing.

Tara: That’s amazing.

Job: It's been a really big difference, and I think again, like pandemic had a lot of bad things, but a good thing that came out of it is that that's almost near universal.

So, not just the Zoom court, but it's also just every little administrative office that we see around the world essentially, had to adopt this kind of model where worst case scenario, you can could just mail them something with snail mail or send them an email.

Tara: Yeah, absolutely. I think those advances have really helped every industry. Even when you look at, for example, retail, it could be argued that they were struggling even before the pandemic.

So, people were having a hard time finding time to just go into a store. Now, with fast delivery, pretty much everything online, they don't even have things in stores anymore.

It helped industries that were previously physical only to really go online. And I think even banks, as you mentioned, I mean just their client and customer base, had to have expanded because of the sheer accessibility. And I think unless you're online, you're really sort of cutting down on your efficacy and on your growth.

Issues of remote work in the legal system

Job: I would love to hear the other side, like other things where the whole remote working thing didn't work out, especially around the courts.

Tara: So, that's an interesting question. I think that some lawyers definitely don't like it and think that it didn't work out or it could have gone better. And I really think it's really the archaic way of practicing.

They seem to associate effective oral advocacy with being in person. So, understanding the body language of the lawyer speaking, understanding the body language of the judge, understanding the room, reading the room.

And so, from a legal perspective, there are some that believe that being in person helps with oral advocacy. I unfortunately, think the opposite. I think that it helped level the playing field significantly.

So, previously, you had a lot of lawyers that were very familiar with certain judges, were very familiar with the courtroom, and unfortunately, it would cause an imbalance in power in that courtroom.

Whereas when you're behind the Zoom screen, you're all of a sudden, meeting certain diversity goals, you're meeting certain inclusion goals. And so, it's been very effective from that perspective. But of course, there are lawyers that don't like it that much.

And then it's just really logistical. I think that even though they went online, they didn't hire enough staff to be able to handle going online. So, yesterday, I phoned the courthouse and I said, “I filed this trial record a week ago and I haven't gotten confirmation still.”

She goes into the system, tells me that it's not even there, and I tell her, “I'm staring at the confirmation number, the charge is on my credit card, I know that it's gone through.” And so, she's asking me to file it again. I say, “Well, now, we're coming dangerously close because it has to be filed 10 business days before the trial.”

So, I was prompt, but because your system is showing that I wasn't prompt, all of a sudden, I'm in a situation where I may be reprimanded by the judge for not filing the trial record on time.

And so, it's really just logistical, I think. And then I don't want to say the other side is ego, but it's sort of the archaic way of practicing. Well, if we're in person, things are just better, and lawyers tend to translate that to the office as well.

Well, mentorship is not as effective when you are working from home, it's much more effective when you're in person. And I tend not to agree with that. I think mentorship can be very effective from home.

Again, tying back to the agency and the autonomy that employees feel when they're working from home, it’s I think a fact that there is much less anxiety working from home than there is working from an office where you're sort of in this hierarchical system because employees feel more comfortable.

Job: Yeah, I think so too. I really think so too. And it's always hard for me to understand what people love so much about the office, but I actually think it's a small number of people that did really well in the office that lost that sense of control to a degree without that physical element, without being actually the loudest in a room where it makes a difference if everybody's in an actual room rather than all in the same size square in Zoom.

Tara: Absolutely, I'm with you. And I enjoy speaking with my employees and I think that the casual nature of remote work allows you to have certain conversations that you wouldn't necessarily have in the office.

And so, you get to know each other in a much different way than you would if you were in the office where it's a little bit more formal.

A situation that could only happen remotely

Job: Tara, I have one last question for you. Can you think of a time where you had to deal with a challenge or you had a particular experience that made you think this could only happen with like remote work, with distributed work?

Tara: Absolutely. So, for example, and because it's fresh in my mind, we had been trying to close a real estate transaction, which I should also mention remote work has helped with tremendously.

Previously, when you were closing a real estate transaction, you had to send a physical certified check to the closing lawyer. They had to then release the keys. They would send the keys to your office, and the purchaser would come and pick up the keys.

Now, we do everything through wire. So, I closed tons of real estate transactions when I was in Costa Rica. And we also only operate with lock boxes.

So, actually, when the transaction closes, the seller's lawyer just provides us with the lockbox code that's physically at the home, and the purchaser just goes over there, plugs it in, doesn't have to see their lawyer, and the keys are already in there.

And so, I had been trying to send a wire transfer. The wire transfer had actually been stopped because the bank had taken the client's check with the down payment and placed a hold on it.

So, I'm now phoning the bank and I'm saying, I don't understand why there's a hold on this. We've been doing this for five years, you can verify our account. There really doesn't need to be a hold on it.

All of a sudden, they're asking me to come into the bank and deal with this. I was completely frustrated. The bank, first of all, was an hour away because the client had deposited it at their branch.

And I had to explain to them that we were closing the transaction in the next three hours. Even by the time I got there, if it was dealt with, to send the wire again, it wouldn't get to the closing lawyer in time to close the transaction that day.

I'm not going to be the person that's telling my client that they were expecting to get into their new home today, and they're not going to. So, that's an example of where it gets very frustrating, is where they actually say, “Well, this can't be handled remotely, we need you to come in.”

And banks, unfortunately, because of high instances of fraud and significant risk, they're usually in a situation where they do want you to come into person and verify your ID.

So, that's an example I think of a situation where challenges arise. And even yesterday I was trying to get a check over to a client's doctor in St. Catherine's, which is an hour and a half away from here. The check gets lost in the mail, of course. So, now we need to send another one.

The client is getting frustrated because the client wants to have the medical documentation immediately. Well, I told the client, I'm not driving to St. Catherine's. So, we had to get another check out.

This time, we had to get a tracking on it, we had to deliver it overnight. And so, it just resulted in increased cost for the client. But had the doctor permitted us to send an e-transfer or really send funds online, we wouldn't be in this mess.

So, I really think it's not necessarily about how does remote work not work for you, it's about how are you doing it incorrectly.

Job: That's great. Thank you so much, Tara.

Tara: Oh, my pleasure. This was awesome.

Job: Thank you so much to Tara for her time today and a brilliant legal insight she's given us. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the way modern courts work over Zoom.

Well, that's just about it for the first episode of Off Mute. We cannot wait to dive into the rest of the series. We've got another 11 episodes with more legal experts to come, but also, a selection of guests from the worlds of finance, HR, and ops.

We'll be back with our next guest in a couple of weeks. Please subscribe to the podcast and give us five stars if you like what you've heard. Thank you for listening to Off Mute and see you next time.