Biglaw

Top Biglaw Firm Will Keep Associates, Staff 'On Call' Instead Of Naming Third Potential Reopening Date

What's the point in setting a new return-to-office date these days?

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Biglaw firms were once so eager to schedule — and then reschedule, and reschedule again — the reopening dates of their offices. Some have grown tired of this seemingly endless rescheduling of events, and one firm thinks it may have found the solution to the problem.

Akin Gump, a firm that brought in $1,208,738,000 gross revenue in 2020, placing it at No. 33 on the most recent Am Law 100, was originally supposed to reopen its offices on September 13. That plan got scrapped in favor of an October 11 reopening. Thanks to the rise of the Delta variant, that plan has also been tabled, and now the firm has a new idea.

Instead of offering up a third reopening date, the firm is placing all attorneys and staff on a standby of sorts. Here are the details from the American Lawyer:

In a Wednesday memo, firm chairperson Kim Koopersmith said the firm is delaying its Oct. 11 return-to-office date and will not be replacing it with another. Instead, the firm will give personnel three weeks’ notice before it decides to bring everybody back.

“We will advise you of the new date as soon as we set one,” Koopersmith said in the memo.

Will your firm take this “on call” approach in the future?

Help us help you. Let us know what your firm is doing to protect employees and adjust to the new normal during this unprecedented moment in time.

As soon as you find out about the reopening plan 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.

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Rather Than Delay Office Returns (Again), One Firm Is Now Keeping Personnel on Standby [American Lawyer]

Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.

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