Report: Lawyers want full-time flex, biglaw better adapt Forum

[Germaine]

Study says lawyers want to work from home, biglaw needs to get on it: http://worklifelaw.org/wp-content/uploa ... webNEW.pdf

HuffPo TLDR summary here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new ... 10edf83627

[ymmv]

Good thing biglaw job seekers have so much bargaining power.

[kaiser]

Working from home now and then can really help ease the stress. Just being removed from the pressure environment can do wonders. Of course, it makes sense to do this only if its a guaranteed slow day where you have relatively large and mundane tasks (ex. doc review, some broad legal research project, etc.). There is just something about sitting on the couch in your boxers next to your dog while eating Lucky Charms that takes the edge off and clears your head.

[Germaine]

Yeah I sort of can't believe this is even an issue for debate at this point. I mean, are there still partners who literally come by your office when they need something? Doesn't everyone just email? Face time seems very boomer to me, but I'm just a 2L.

[ymmv]

Yeah I sort of can't believe this is even an issue for debate at this point. I mean, are there still partners who literally come by your office when they need something? Doesn't everyone just email? Face time seems very boomer to me, but I'm just a 2L.

No, they call you to their office. Yes, people email all day, but face-to-face meetings are still constant.

[Germaine]

Yes, people email all day, but face-to-face meetings are still constant.

This can't possibly survive as a ritual for more than another 5 or 10 years.

[ymmv]

Yes, people email all day, but face-to-face meetings are still constant.

This can't possibly survive as a ritual for more than another 5 or 10 years.

Yes, it can. Once you start working in an office you'll realize that email is an exhausting and potentially endless timesink of minute clarifications, addenda, and miscommunications. It's frequently way easier to tackle a problem, get a handle on an assignment, or just figure out what the hell's going on in person.

[UnicornHunter]

Yes, people email all day, but face-to-face meetings are still constant.

This can't possibly survive as a ritual for more than another 5 or 10 years.

Yeah! Down with face to face interaction...

[kaiser]

Yes, people email all day, but face-to-face meetings are still constant.

This can't possibly survive as a ritual for more than another 5 or 10 years.

Yes, it can. Once you start working in an office you'll realize that email is an exhausting and potentially endless timesink of minute clarifications, addenda, and miscommunications. It's frequently way easier to tackle a problem, get a handle on an assignment, or just figure out what the hell's going on in person.

This. The few times I have gotten burned the worst during my biglaw tenure are all from email miscommunications (which were not necessarily apparent at the time of the email). Every time, I said to myself, if I had at least picked up the phone to discuss, I would have realized X or Y thing that came back to bite me later. Doesn't mean it would need to be a face-to-face meeting, but email often just doesn't cut it.

A phone convo would usually be sufficient. Still unsure why the face-to-face thing is still a thing.

[Germaine]

Yeah! Down with face to face interaction...

I'm not saying it's a good thing that we are moving fast in a remote work direction, just saying it's a thing. I can't think of a white collar industry that is holding fast to the chained-to-office model.

[smaug]

Yeah! Down with face to face interaction...

I'm not saying it's a good thing that we are moving fast in a remote work direction, just saying it's a thing. I can't think of a white collar industry that is holding fast to the chained-to-office model.

They're not as paranoid about paper trails as lawyers are.

(They probably should be, though.)

[Desert Fox]

[smaug]

Yeah! Down with face to face interaction...

I'm not saying it's a good thing that we are moving fast in a remote work direction, just saying it's a thing. I can't think of a white collar industry that is holding fast to the chained-to-office model.

They're not as paranoid about paper trails as lawyers are.

(They probably should be, though.)

Why god invented the telephone.

OFS and it is easy enough to work from home and call, especially given that if you're on a large case you probably are working with people in other offices anyway.

I'm not anti working from home. I'd guess that more attorneys can do it than try to. I just also want to push back against the idea that lawyers could move away from offices the way other industries can. Data security shit makes that pretty difficult, even with stuff like Citrix.

[Desert Fox]

[Anonymous User]

Working from home now and then can really help ease the stress. Just being removed from the pressure environment can do wonders. Of course, it makes sense to do this only if its a guaranteed slow day where you have relatively large and mundane tasks (ex. doc review, some broad legal research project, etc.). There is just something about sitting on the couch in your boxers next to your dog while eating Lucky Charms that takes the edge off and clears your head.

I'm actually less efficient working from home on the big tasks but more efficient on the days when I would otherwise get into work at 10 and spend 8 hours on meetings/calls, drafting emails, making edits and send stuff out, etc. So whenever I have to scramble to write a motion in 10 hours over the weekend I basically need to be in the office.

[throwaway2018]

In my previous career, I used to manage staff all the time.

Whenever one told me they were "working from home" I automatically assumed they were goofing off while charging time to my client. 75% of the time I was right and I almost always made a mental note to never work with them again. This was at a firm that encouraged flex time and working from home.

From a practical standpoint, it's a huge pain in the ass to teach someone over email or on the phone. Keep in mind, I am a millennial so I know how to use technology. Just imagine what the boomer partners think about things like flex time.

[totesTheGoat]

A phone convo would usually be sufficient. Still unsure why the face-to-face thing is still a thing.

When dealing with a bunch of documents, I prefer face-to-face. Sometimes the conversation goes in a different direction than I expected, and it's much easier to just flip through a document looking for that one sentence that caught my eye a couple days ago than pulling up an electronic copy and doing a search for a bunch of words I don't remember verbatim.

video conferencing is almost as good as face-to-face, but it costs money and it's sometime more of a PITA than just walking down the hall.

[Germaine]

A phone convo would usually be sufficient. Still unsure why the face-to-face thing is still a thing.

When dealing with a bunch of documents, I prefer face-to-face. Sometimes the conversation goes in a different direction than I expected, and it's much easier to just flip through a document looking for that one sentence that caught my eye a couple days ago than pulling up an electronic copy and doing a search for a bunch of words I don't remember verbatim.

video conferencing is almost as good as face-to-face, but it costs money and it's sometime more of a PITA than just walking down the hall.

But this seems more like an argument for keeping some office/face time in place, not for keeping people in offices all day. I work better from office too, so I wouldn't be work from home guy. But people are different and work well in different setups. The idea that firms are somehow going to be able to retain the old one-size-fits-all model seems totally ludicrous to me.

[ymmv]

A phone convo would usually be sufficient. Still unsure why the face-to-face thing is still a thing.

When dealing with a bunch of documents, I prefer face-to-face. Sometimes the conversation goes in a different direction than I expected, and it's much easier to just flip through a document looking for that one sentence that caught my eye a couple days ago than pulling up an electronic copy and doing a search for a bunch of words I don't remember verbatim.

video conferencing is almost as good as face-to-face, but it costs money and it's sometime more of a PITA than just walking down the hall.

But this seems more like an argument for keeping some office/face time in place, not for keeping people in offices all day. I work better from office too, so I wouldn't be work from home guy. But people are different and work well in different setups. The idea that firms are somehow going to be able to retain the old one-size-fits-all model seems totally ludicrous to me.

Why wouldn't they be able to? This is probably one of the most conservative and internally conformist professions in the country.

[Germaine]

Why wouldn't they be able to? This is probably one of the most conservative and internally conformist professions in the country.

Which is why it's one of the last dominos to fall. But I mean seriously just look around -- techonology + people's desire to be autonomous = radical change in how and when we work. Law is somehow going to be the one exception to that trend?

[A. Nony Mouse]

Autonomy and biglaw seem pretty contradictory.

[ymmv]

Why wouldn't they be able to? This is probably one of the most conservative and internally conformist professions in the country.

Which is why it's one of the last dominos to fall.

What are you talking about? Did I miss some tectonic shift last night wherein the vast majority of office jobs in this country have stopped requiring physical presence? Or is one of us just radically out of touch with the realities of ordinary work environments.

[Germaine]

Why wouldn't they be able to? This is probably one of the most conservative and internally conformist professions in the country.

Which is why it's one of the last dominos to fall.

What are you talking about? Did I miss some tectonic shift last night wherein the vast majority of office jobs in this country have stopped requiring physical presence? Or is one of us just radically out of touch with the realities of ordinary work environments.

Don't know what you consider tectonic, but % of people working at least one day from home went up 35% btwn 2001 and 2010. You think it's slowed since then?

[Desert Fox]

[ymmv]

Why wouldn't they be able to? This is probably one of the most conservative and internally conformist professions in the country.

Which is why it's one of the last dominos to fall.

What are you talking about? Did I miss some tectonic shift last night wherein the vast majority of office jobs in this country have stopped requiring physical presence? Or is one of us just radically out of touch with the realities of ordinary work environments.

Don't know what you consider tectonic, but % of people working at least one day from home went up 35% btwn 2001 and 2010. You think it's slowed since then?

A 35% increase from what percent?