It’s wild what a difference five years makes. In, say, 2019 (notably pre-Covid), if you said the new Biglaw trend was four days in the office I’d think work/life balance was finally having its moment and firms were actually making progress to prevent burnout. But it is 2025, and requiring four days of office face time is a stricter requirement than most firm lawyers have grown accustomed to over the last five years.
Four days in the office is definitely the new trend. The latest firm to announce four days is Duane Morris, a firm with $694,188,000 in gross revenue last year making it 82nd on the Am Law 200 ranking. Earlier this week, the firm announced that, after Labor Day, they’ll have to be back in the office Monday through Thursday.
Read the full memo below.
The Law Firm’s Guide To Trust Accounting And Three-Way Reconciliation
Proper trust accounting and three-way reconciliation are essential for protecting client funds and avoiding serious compliance risks. In this guide, we break down these critical processes and show how legal-specific software can help your firm stay accurate, efficient, and audit-ready.
Duane Morris isn’t the only firm on the four-day-a-week train Covington; Davis Polk; Latham; Paul Weiss; Ropes & Gray; Simpson Thacher; Skadden; Vinson & Elkins; Weil Gotshal; WilmerHale; White & Case; Sidley; Hogan Lovells; and A&O Shearman will have a four-day, in-person attendance policy — and Sullivan & Cromwell has taken its attendance policy one step further, requiring attorneys to work from the office five days each week.
As soon as you find out about office attendance plans at your firm, please email us (Opens in a new window) (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.
