Home is where the office is?

• Recent surveys confirm the importance of being able to work remotely for legal professionals; however, concerns around ensuring regulatory compliance and providing the most valuable experience for newly-qualified lawyers should not be overlooked.

Lawyers working from home used to be the exception, but now the remote work genie is out of the bottle; recent studies show that lawyers, particularly younger ones, put a premium on remote working. More than a third of high-flyers at leading London law firms are ignoring the calls to return, according to a survey by legal software firm BigHand, whose authors warned that such firms were wasting time and money because highly paid lawyers were being compelled to track down staff to carry out tasks, thereby damaging their own ‘fee-earning capabilities’.

However, many solicitors say that working from home does not adversely affect their productivity, while others assert that they are even more productive without the distraction of colleagues’ non-work-related conversations. Researchers have found that 48% of staff at British firms would look for a new job if they were forced to work more than three days a week in the office, and some detect an appetite among in-house lawyers to be free to work from home for good, while big law firms are reported to want their large areas of office space used.

Conflicting objectives

It sounds as if things are getting a bit edgy, so is this purely a contractual issue between lawyers and their employers? And if they are dismissed for failing to return at the employer’s request, is there anything they can do? Max Winthrop, a partner at Sintons LLP and a co-opted member of the Law Society’s employment law committee, said: ‘People would like staff to be in the office more, but—like most sectors—there is now a real appetite amongst in-house lawyers, both in the UK and the US, to be able to work from home.’

A spokesperson for the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) said they did not directly have a view; and that firms’ working arrangements are up to them. They added: ‘What concerns us is how a firm works, whether they have arrangements in place to ensure the public are protected, that their firm is run properly, and maintains high professional standards.’

They explained that the £119,691 the SRA recently received from the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund was not about people working from home, but about developing technology. The money would fund a project to explore ways to increase the use of technology-enabled dispute resolution to help individuals and businesses resolve legal issues, without the need to go to court.

Asked whether the regulator has seen an increase in complaints linked to home working, the spokesperson said: ‘While we cannot comment directly on the nature of individual complaints, it is worth pointing out that we haven’t seen significant increases in the volume of complaints over recent years, across a period when different ways of working have become more common.’ They added: ‘At the start of the pandemic, we issued support material on issues the firms and individuals might need to consider in ensuring they are able to achieve this, but from a regulatory perspective, we would not directly have a view, but since the pandemic we have produced materials to help lawyers working from home.’

How about regulatory issues? ‘We would be interested in whether the arrangements are in place to deliver a professional service to the client’, said the department’s spokesperson, adding: ‘Before the pandemic there were virtual law firms, and we have a job in helping with technical innovation. Such firms don’t need to have a real office. Their choice of working arrangements are up to them, but if what the law firm does raises a client protection issue that would concern us wherever they were working.’

Enticement to apply

Some commentators caution applicants against applying to firms purely on the basis that they might be able to work from home, as it could be being used simply as a recruitment tool. As well as this, newly-qualified lawyers would undoubtedly gain a lot from being in the office. ‘The experiential learning gained from office conversations, and being around others is invaluable, and students who have been adversely affected by studying in isolated environments during lockdowns would wish to get back to normality’, comments James Catchpole, associate dean of postgraduate and professional degree programmes at the City Law School. 

According to James Knight, Keystone Law’s CEO and founder, lawyers want flexibility and are turning to firms who can offer this and more: ‘By using technology efficiently, there is no reason why lawyers can’t maintain superior client service, without having to be in the office’, he said, adding that his firm was launched to give lawyers complete control over their practice. He added: ‘While [they] have worked in this way for many years, the wider profession’s first glimpse of the benefits of remote working was during the pandemic. It is, therefore, not surprising that post-pandemic, many want to retain that option.’

Knight adds that Keystone has ‘a strict compliance policy, which includes maintaining client confidentiality and privacy in all settings. It advises all lawyers to maintain an office mindset at home, such as having a suitable set-up to maintain files and documents securely, as well as using our document management system, which complies with high levels of cyber security and encryption’.

Veronica Cowan is a barrister and journalist.