Ropes & Gray's Reopening Plan Puts An End To The 5-Day, In-Office Workweek For Associates
This is huge. Will more firms follow in their footsteps?
One by one, top Biglaw firms are announcing their plans for their eventual return to the office in the wake of the pandemic. Several other firms have already laid out three-part reopening plans, each with varying levels of flexibility for the amount of time attorneys would have to be present in the office. We now have news of perhaps the most flexible reopening plan of them all, and it comes from one of the most successful firms in the country.
Back in February, Ropes & Gray announced that it was setting its sights on a September reopening. Yesterday, during a firmwide town hall meeting, chair Julie Jones laid out the firm’s vision for a return to work for attorneys, in three phases. Here are the key points from a follow-up memo (available in full on the next page) that she sent last night to reiterate all that was said:
Phase 1 (now through the summer)-experience the office if you can. As we mentioned in our February message, our permissive, and entirely optional, use of the offices continues into September.
Phase 2 (targeted for the week of Sept. 13)-we recommend that you spend time in the office more regularly, one to two days a week.
Phase 3 (likely November through 2022)-we will look for a more regular rhythm to office life, and recommend that you spend the majority of your work week (three days a week) in the office.
For associates, these were likely the two most important sentences from Jones’s email: “No matter what phase we are in, we endorse flexibility post-pandemic. We don’t expect that we’ll ever mandate a five-day a week in-office environment.” Yes, you read that correctly. Ropes & Gray — a firm that brought in $2,192,810,000 gross revenue in 2020, placing it at No. 11 in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — is not likely to require that attorneys spend five days in the office, ever again.
For a Biglaw firm of Ropes & Gray’s stature to announce an indefinite policy like this is huge. With this announcement, did Ropes just end the five-day, in-office workweek for good? We’ll have to see if this turns into a trend that catches on across more Biglaw firms.
Sources we’ve heard from say they really appreciate the ramp-up time the firm is allowing for them to reacquaint themselves with office life, and that the flexibility being offered here is what really makes Ropes & Gray a fantastic place to work.
Congratulations to the firm for creating a reopening plan that focuses on flexibility for all attorneys, making very clear that “Ropes is about people, not place.”
What has your firm announced as far as a reopening plan is concerned? The more information is out there, the more likely it is that firms will be able to establish a market standard for a return to work.
As soon as you find out about reopening plans at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
