Biglaw

The Next Big Announcement In Biglaw: The End Of The Office Work Week

Don't worry, you'll still have to bill constantly.

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For most of its existence, Biglaw has remained relatively conservative in outlook. Cravath would announce annual bonuses, others would follow in lockstep, partnership tracks would run eight years, and salaries would be set and then stagnate for years at a time. But the past handful of years have brought considerable upheaval. Baker McKenzie offered the first bonuses last year. Milbank’s pushing the salary envelope. And the rise of the non-equity partner has thrown the whole game into turmoil.

As we speak, we’re in the midst of an impromptu supplementary bonus war kicked off by Willkie Farr and then blown out of the water by Davis Polk — following a 2020 special bonus where Davis Polk went over the top of Cooley. It feels like everyone is jockeying to be recognized as a market leader.

And where big, tradition-shattering announcements are the coin of the realm, what will be the next big move? At this point, you’ve got to think it’s a permanent end to the five-day office work week.

After a year and change of working from home, and commercial real estate already reflecting a sharp decline in office space, law firms are starting to wonder if they really need to be bringing everyone back full-time. We’ve already seen offices built with the concept of telecommuting in mind with cutbacks in personal office space in lieu of more situational and collaborative spaces. As firms eye their next lease, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see more leniency toward working from home coupled with trimming square footage.

And lest anyone think this is a bridge too far for the staid world of Biglaw, we’ve already heard rumblings. A couple of Biglaw firms have already communicated to associates that they are “considering” a permanent end to requiring full-week office attendance. Obviously, “considering” is not a final decision, but when firms not accustomed to leading the pack to mull the idea out loud, it indicates momentum is already underway among firm managers across the industry.

Now, working from home may come as cold comfort to some associates. It’s less a four-day work week than an invitation to wear sweats during your ongoing seven-day work week. But it’s still better than nothing. There’s also an advantage that I had never thought of until someone brought it to my attention the other day: normalizing working from home benefits working mothers who sometimes opt for work from home schedules and get subtly (or not so subtly) marginalized for it.

Of course there’s the possibility that Biglaw will walk away from this experience determined to seamlessly return to the pre-COVID world. Firms that only recently committed to long-term leases on glittering corporate palaces would welcome that. But it’s hard to imagine the bulk of firms staring at the remote working infrastructure they’ve built and successfully leveraged for the past year — a year in which many firms saw record revenue — and not think about trimming office space overhead.

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Which firm is going to take the leap first?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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