Norton Rose Fulbright shut down its Dubai office for a fortnight after a staff member contracted COVID-19, but the firm has rejected claims that a lax approach to anti-viral measures was responsible.

An NRF employee fell ill with COVID-19 two weeks ago, RollOnFriday has learned, leading to the closure of the office and all staff self-quarantining for two weeks. It re-opened this week.

Before the outbreak, staff had been allowed to attend weekly office meetings "without any social distancing or face masks" at which shared food platters were "encouraged", claimed a source. 

But while NRF confirmed that one of its Dubai staff did fall ill, it said the individual "did not contract the disease in our offices".


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"Would you *cough* pass the *hack* grapes?"


However, before they displayed symptoms, Typhoid Mary/Mark "elected to attend a meeting where social distancing was reasonably practised", said a spokesperson for the firm, and so the whole office was taken off the board.

A spokesperson said there had been no further cases. 

As offices balance returning staff to the office with the likelihood of infections and the attendant risk of liability, expect sudden closures, which would have generated headlines a year ago, to become the irritating norm.

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Comments

Anon 04 July 20 03:07

Yeah come on ROF, we come to this site excitedly every Friday to learn about law firm scandal and the latest juicy gossip, absurd decisions by the SRA, instances of management of big law being caught with their pants down on some cover up or stitch up, amusing stories about law firm toilets and lap dance loving partners and inappropriate emails accidentally copied to all, PR law firm disasters, lawyers who leave law to join the circus and make it big, hypocrital law firm virtue signalling, the occasional serious angle where the establishment is shown to act unfairly or without integrity and to see amusing pictures of lawyers with 1970s mullets. Don’t tell us about a law firm shutting for a while when that has happened right across the market, it’s really lame “news”.

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