You may have seen Segun Osuntokun’s recent comments in the Daily Telegraph about the importance of respecting lawyers’ work-life balance, particularly the suggestion that non-urgent emails be refrained from during weekends. Osuntokun, global senior partner of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, promotes the idea that law firms must prioritise the wellbeing of lawyers to foster a sustainable working culture and nurture long-term productivity.
Osuntokun’s call for law firms to reconsider how they treat lawyers is timely, coming a year after the tragic death of Vanessa Ford, a fine lawyer at Pinsent Masons. Partners would do well to ensure that employees are treated as well as clients. As Sir Richard Branson puts it: ‘Employees come first.’ That includes thinking about workload (too much and too little), managing client demands (and sometimes saying ‘no’) and making positive changes to nurture employee mental health. After all, as Branson says, ‘if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients’.
One of my first experiences in law was a summer job, post A-levels, in a small high street law firm in Kent, just up the road from a medieval castle. The firm was based in what must have been a magnificent Georgian house, replete with zigzagging staircases, fireplaces and such. I spent the summer running errands, covering reception when the receptionist had lunch and putting up shelves (which may or may not still be there).
Each morning, the team of secretaries (remember them?) and I would stand together, open letters and stuff them into the respective fee-earner pigeonholes. And given those fee-earners then responded by letter, it must have been the same at every firm that corresponded with Tweedie & Prideaux [not the firm’s actual name, in fact, that was the name of the firm at which Charles Dickens was an articled clerk, which subsequently became VWV, but I digress…].
This inefficiency was wonderful. Weeks would go by between exchanges of correspondence. Piles of letters and papers would build up on a fee-earner’s desk. Two teams of people were needed to communicate a letter from one solicitor to the opposing side. But despite such involvement, everyone seemed relaxed and happy, work was undertaken and billed, and partners seemed to be enjoying a decent standard of living.
And then came email.
Email was the death of law as a sector where one could easily enjoy a good work-life balance. The adoption in the late 1990s of emails by corporates, and necessarily law firms, changed everything. Suddenly, those we were corresponding with knew we had immediately received their correspondence, read receipts told them we had read them and demands for urgent responses became the norm. A few years later, in 2003, the BlackBerry appeared, meaning that those we were corresponding with now knew that we could receive emails outside office hours, most likely that we were reading them and clients demanded urgent responses.
Breaking down the divide between professional and personal time, the introduction of email increased client and partner expectations of associates. Partners were more than willing to work evenings and weekends to ensure their PEP. Associates were not so incentivised but played along with the regime, presumably to meet increasing billable hour targets or chase the carrot of partnership.
Then… burnout.
I have witnessed a colleague at a previous firm crying in the office, unable to cope with the demands of the firm; an opposing solicitor, who took a sabbatical immediately after completion as a result of the pressure she was under and the hours she had to work in order to achieve the expectations of her partnership; and a friend who left a US firm because they wanted her to work evenings and most weekends.
The problem with the traditional law firm model of billable hour targets, an ‘always-on’ mentality, stressed-out partners and substantial workloads is that it leaves little room for creativity or personal wellbeing. These are the two key ingredients for innovative, high-quality legal work. And for many, it is a reason to leave private practice to go in-house or to regain some control by becoming a consultant. If firms want to optimise productivity and retain talented lawyers, they need to think again.
Giving fee-earners a better work-life balance does not have to come at the expense of the client/firm relationship. Indeed, a more engaged, energised, creative and productive lawyer is more attractive a resource to clients than those who are moving from completion to new instruction almost autonomously, striving for their bonus by reaching their colossal billable hours target, too tired to think about leaving their firm.
There has been progress, but more needs to be done. Partners can do more to create working environments where employees have the mindspace to do their work, rather than constantly working at 100 miles an hour. Emails are the tip of the iceberg in that respect.
Partnerships are notoriously conservative, they fear change because that threatens profits. But those who embrace change in respect of employee welfare will have a happy, energised, creative workforce that will serve clients better and generate greater profits. Branson was right, employees must come first.
John Wallace is managing director of Ridgemont, a boutique law firm specialising in real estate and construction
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