Yeah – law firm profits nose-dived during Covid when their associates were working from home and associates didn’t have their pick of new opportunities in a red hot remote working job market during Covid…oh wait

Lol Rent Free

Knew I’d get a bite from you Alan

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4466130

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515

CC have just introduced the same monitoring policy this week in the UK

Then you should be dealing with “said associate’s” performance issues one on one, rather than applying a blanket policy to the whole office. Either the expectations aren’t clear to that person, or you’re consistently letting them get away with that behavior.

OK, Boomer!

Alan is too junior to instruct a bazza. How’s that second rotation going mate?

In terms of Slaughter’s – necessary? Surely not. Proportionate – if it’s a “very small minority” then what about all the 100s of others who are having their personal data processed for no real reason.

I’m pretty sure Slaughter’s are relying on the fact that it’s career suicide to challenge your firm on stuff like this…

I presume it has something to do with commuting time and other minutiae…

But, the likelihood is that S&M’s associates live in/near the City so asking for them to go to work for 3 days a week surely isn’t a big ask with NQ rates higher than some partners earn in the mid-town firms.

For juniors/associates, a good boss will let you WFH when you need to, yes.

However, is a good boss someone who lets juniors work remotely, regularly? I’ve heard a lot about this happening and then they aren’t in the office when the junior does turn up. No, that is not okay.

I think a lot of it is fuelled by lazy seniors who also want the flexibility, and still expect to grow a competent and profitable team around them…..

Such an Alan

If you are actually working from home, what has it to do with work life balance?

My own personal lockdown experience was that I found it unpleasant to work really hard from home as I started associating my home with the high pressure, even when I wasn’t working. I’d prefer to leave that world at the door.

Finally a voice of reason. Please wait for the trolls to come out of the woodwork demanding you apologise for their hurt feelings.

Ridiculous and depressing that the world made strides forward in terms of work life balance during the pandemic and is now actively regressing.

While there’s no billable hours target at SM, the firm still does time recording. How exactly is it possible to watch Netflix all day and get away with it?

Yes, absolutely, and they know this of course. The days of the working practices code and putting the job redesign programme up in lights seem long gone. We’ve pivoted from retention mode into attrition mode.

All that to say I’m not surprised S&M is going that route – associates did that to themselves.