What's it like to start a new job during a pandemic? Here's how this in-house lawyer and mom did it

It’s been a Hindenburg of a year. 

Being a lawyer during normal times is stressful enough. 

But couple the standard pressures of the legal industry with COVID-19, widespread regulatory uncertainty, financial crisis, political and societal turmoil, remote working, homeschooling and novel risk and compliance concerns—and it’s all a bit too much. 

In June, the Association of Corporate Counsel released some sobering results from a flash poll of 460 in-house lawyers. Nearly 50% of the respondents were exhausted and also unable to sleep well. More than 43% were anxious. Almost a quarter reported an “increased use of substances.” 

Nearly 50% of respondents were having trouble switching off from work, while nearly 75% were experiencing moderate to very high levels of burnout. 

Shana Simmons knows about stress. In August, she left her senior counsel job at Google, where she’d worked for nearly nine years, to take over as the first-ever general counsel for Oakland-based legal tech startup Everlaw. 

Simmons was able to switch jobs in the middle of a pandemic while taking care of her kids, ages 5 and 8, while her firefighter husband was working away from home, sometimes for days at a time. And she hasn’t lost her mind. 

Simmons talked recently with Corporate Counsel about being a chief lawyer and a full-time mom while working from home and what she’s done to combat the ever-present threat of fatigue and stress. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Corporate Counsel: So you started during the pandemic …

Shana Simmons: I haven’t met anyone in person yet. I interviewed and joined during the pandemic. 

CC: I imagine that wasn’t stressful at all.

SS: Nope. Not at all. 

CC: Well, talk with me about that process and some of the stress that I assume might come along with that/?

SS: Actually, I have to say, the interview process itself probably would’ve been more stressful had I been going into the office and traveling more. I traveled quite a bit while I was at Google. The fact that I was at home allowed me the space and time to think about what leaving Google would look like and consider another opportunity. When I interviewed, however, was right when COVID hit. I have two young kids, and so it was when I was a first-grade teacher, preschool teacher, running a big team at Google, a global team looking at global issues. So it was a little bit interesting to make the context switch to learning about a new company to even go through the interviews.

But since I’ve been here, it’s been actually quite nice to onboard at home, strangely. I’ve been most productive because I don’t have the additional burden of being social. All these tech companies are working in open space now. So I can get away with just being at my desk and getting the foundational work done that I would like for the department so when we do go back to the office we’re in a good position. 

CC: You mentioned having children … how do you keep them out of the room when you’re in meetings?

SS: It’s interesting. In the beginning of the pandemic, when no one knew what was happening— my husband is an Oakland firefighter, so there was no working from home for him—and I couldn’t keep them out of the room. I just had to say, “This is all that you get with me right now. This is work-life integration at it’s best.” They’d come in. They’d have drum practice. I’d have to help them with Zoom. So I don’t always keep them out of the room. Now, my son is going to school in person a few days a week with 10 kids per class. And my daughter has a babysitter for the days that my husband’s at work. 

CC: How, as general counsel, do you help to manage the stress levels of your teammates? How do you help them cope with burnout?

SS: For me, Everlaw is not a chat-first company, which was revolutionary to me. I could get to things when I got to them. There was no expectation to always be on. I don’t feel like I always have to be on the clock and that eased a lot of my anxiety. Then we have very clear guidelines about how we manage. And we’re very prescriptive about our meetings. Every meeting has an agenda. There isn’t a feeling of wasted time or unnecessary preparation. That was a change for me.

And my CEO is very deliberate. The building could be burning and he was very disciplined about waiting until our one-hour a week that we have Wednesdays to tell me what was going on. And then I go forward for the week to kind of make sure that we’re covered for the company. So that translated into how I manage my team.

There’s no expectation that they’re always on. If I need something, we can talk during our one-on-ones. We have two checkpoints a week, individually and as a team. We go through our rainy day items and the things that are on fire that we have to get done. My team members have families. It’s important for me to give them space and permission to do less with less right now. Not do more with less. Let’s ruthlessly prioritize. Let’s figure out what we can drop right now so you don’t  burn out and are giving us your best. 

CC: How about you? How do you take care of yourself mentally?

SS: They say you’ve gotta put that oxygen mask on first, right? For me, I think again it’s maintaining that discipline and keeping those boundaries with my CEO and, it’s an enterprise company, so, most importantly, with the VP of sales. Really say, “This is what we’re working with. Some things are not going to get done. So you can decide and we can decide together.” I can’t take time without being very clear with my colleagues about what they should expect and when they should expect it.

When I first got here, HR wanted answers right away. So I found a consultant that fit within my budget that I could put on an alias to help me and address those. And anything with me, I had to give them a SLA [service-level agreement] to say, “You can’t expect a 24-hour turnaround. If something is urgent let me know and I will turn it around in 24 hours. If not, you’ll have to wait about three days for my response.”

I can’t just keep juggling and responding to the first thing in my inbox. The other thing is that my kids are home. I have no other choice but to take some time in the evenings and afternoons to be with them. I get my best thinking hiking with them. I just get out of the house and go for hikes. 

CC: Why do you think so many in-house professionals are experiencing burnout and fatigue?

SS: It goes back to everyone putting pressure on themselves to do more with less. I think the legal field has been the slowest to adopt technologies that work faster. We’ve seen finance adopt it. We’ve seen sales adopt it. I think we are just now realizing that some of these technologies are necessary for us to collaborate more seamlessly and to work more efficiently together, which was why my first hire was a legal operations manager. I realized the importance of us working more efficiently.

CC: Looking back at what you and your colleagues have learned over the past year about how to deal with stress, do you anticipate that what you’ve learned will stick, that some of those methods will be adopted permanently?  

SS: I hope so. Because I think right now what we see, especially in tech, is we see these employee activists, which are pretty healthy for the companies to keep them honest. I think that companies are going to be forced to reevaluate some of those decisions to figure out what works and be more flexible for employees who can work from home, letting people work from home on certain days. It’s realizing that some of those boundaries were helpful for both parties, manager and managee. For me, one thing that came out of this pandemic is that I’m super grateful every day that I’m healthy, both on the good days and even the tough days at work. It’s allowed me to have a better and healthier mindset when it comes to work.