Biglaw

Associates Apparently Won't Have Jobs For Long If They Don't Return To The Office

Maybe if we withhold their billable hours they'll come back to the office...

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lawyer work from homeMany Biglaw firms are now officially sounding the alarm: associates must get back to the office or risk losing their jobs. That’s right, according to the American Lawyer, the latest partner ploy to lure associates back to the office is to deny billable hours to associates who are working remotely and aren’t showing their faces enough in real time.

In a recent Am Law survey, Biglaw partners said that they’d be willing to “abandon” associates who “deserted” their firms in their “pushing back” on the return to the office. Here’s more:

“Frankly, I do not give assignments to associates and junior partners who are not in the office at least 3 days a week although most of my colleagues are now working 4 days a week. I also will not support associates seeking partnership if they have abandoned the office,” wrote one Am Law 100 practice leader, adding that he felt far more relaxed upon returning to the office 18 months ago.

Another Am Law 100 partner emphasized the need for lawyers to give up their personal lives in service of clients, framing associates’ hopes to change that expectation as youthful naivety that ultimately burdens the lawyers above them.

“To succeed, your life simply cannot be your own,” the partner wrote. “Young associates do not want to live like this—and they are pushing back against the business model, but what they do not understand is that the work is still getting done. It’s just getting done by those above them, to the detriment of the physical and mental well being of those who don’t have the option of dropping the ball.”

This is what many associates are up against in their quest for a hybrid workplace. There are partners out there who are willing to gatekeep the assignment of billable hours that may help keep associates employed. Meanwhile, let’s not forget that during peak pandemic times, associates billed more hours than ever before while helping their firms break financial records. And now, those associates who’d like to keep working remotely suddenly aren’t “fully committed” to their firms? Yeah, okay.

Some firms — like Husch Blackwell, DLA Piper, and Gordon Rees — aren’t twisting associates’ arms about returning to the office, and are even allowing them to choose their own in-office attendance frequencies. “There is no reason why someone has to get dressed and commute an hour each way to go to an office, turn on a computer, work on it, and go home,” Gordon Rees managing partner Dion Cominos told Am Law. “When you come in, you should be advancing business objectives of the organization or your own career in some way. Let’s have an attendance policy based on that rather than a number of days.”

Maybe associates who are being threatened with unemployment will find their way to firms that aren’t making threats like these and are instead willing to work with the realities of the post-COVID hybrid workplace.

In Battle for Billable Hours, Not Coming in Will Cost Some Associates Their Jobs [American Lawyer]

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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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