Latham Calls Lawyers Back To Office, Even Though Midlevels Sit In Open Cubicles NOW
Maybe make sure they have enough office to come back to.
We get it, the post-pandemic landscape is tough. Everyone got used to working from home and making more money for their firms than ever before. But younger classes of attorneys floundered without experienced peers to casually teach them the ropes. Firms need to coax experienced attorneys back to the office without watching them lateral to some boutique that doesn’t lean on associates as vectors for passive mentorship. No small feat — and one made all the more difficult if a firm overpromised in the past and lawyers made life decisions that can’t be easily undone.
Latham just informed its folks that they should head on back to the friendly confines of 1271 Avenue of the Americas this fall. And, as an added bonus, ordering them back to that office after January 1!
We believe working and being together in person is essential, and so beginning January 1, we will expect our attorneys to work in the office at least four days per week when they are not away for business travel, vacation, or personal obligations. After Labor Day, we encourage our attorneys not yet meeting this standard to begin to adjust your in-office schedule to establish a routine of working from the office at least three days per week.
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On the plus side, Latham’s memo embraces the idea that its attorneys are professionals capable of making smart decisions, announcing its respect for a flexible office attendance approach:
Our goal is to balance the real and changing demands each person faces on both the work and personal fronts, so there will be no mandatory attendance days. Rather, we defer to each of you to determine what works best. This approach requires that we all use our own professional judgment to determine when to work remotely, taking into consideration firm, client, practice, and personal demands.
From our ongoing Biglaw vibe check, attorneys care far more about flexibility than whether the plan requires 3- or 4-days in the office. So this is a positive.
What’s this?
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Let’s rethink taking zooms alone from your desk — invite team members to take a call together from your office or a conference room and use that occasion as a training opportunity. Take someone to lunch or coffee; and seek to create the spontaneous interactions that were the norm prior to 2020.
Curious. Collaboration might be the name of the game, but this seems like an aggressive call for sitting atop one another. Almost as though the firm doesn’t actually expect to have enough office space to accommodate all the people they’re bringing back in four days per week.
And… indeed, they don’t. At least not from what anyone can tell. The firm already has a Flex program, basically a hoteling system where associates don’t have permanent offices now. A tipster also noted that the new policy is “interesting for a firm that has rising 4th years sitting in open cubicle seating due to lack of office space.”
This expectation applies to all of our NY attorneys, regardless of the type of seat to which they are assigned or their enrollment in our Flex program, and we need everyone’s help to make the most efficient use of our office space. More information on seating will follow, but rest assured, we want to and can accommodate each attorney at 1271 under this plan. With that said, we will look at attendance patterns in the fall to determine whether revisions are needed to our seating strategy in the new year.
Now we see why the firm wants to start getting people in during the fall. It’s the trial run to figure out exactly how screwed they are on space. We trust Latham when it declared “rest assured” that they’ll figure out a way to accommodate everyone, but the quality of those accommodations might leave something to be desired — at least in the short-run.
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Full memo reproduced on the next page.
Joe 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 or Bluesky 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.
