header-logo header-logo

14 January 2022 / Rachel Lewis
Issue: 7962 / Categories: Features , Profession , Covid-19
printer mail-detail

People first—developing a whole-firm back to the office policy

68407
Rachel Lewis explains how her firm, Farrer & Co, has opted to keep the best of both worlds when it reorganised its working practices
  • The firm introduced an agile 40% in-office policy.
  • Staff have control over their working week.

The pandemic has prompted a collective reassessment of long-held working practices, which all businesses, including those in the legal profession, have had to address.

In our case at Farrer & Co, the transition to the entire firm working from home proved relatively straightforward and near-seamless on a practical level (thanks in no small part to the work of our IT department), with teams able to maintain client service levels, quality, and responsiveness. However, as the months began to roll by, many of us longed to see more of our colleagues and to get back to our much-loved collective professional home in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

We therefore began to think about how we could develop a new working framework which could give us the best of both

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

Fieldfisher partner appointed president as LSLA marks milestone year

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Firm promotes two lawyers to partnership across employment and family

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Firm promotes five lawyers to partnership across key growth areas

NEWS
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
Thousands more magistrates are to be recruited, under a major shake-up to speed up and expand the hiring process
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
back-to-top-scroll