Should Law Firms Pay Their Lawyers 20% Less For 20% Less Work?

Law.com, Should US Law Firms Offer 20% Less Pay for 20% Less Work?:

When asked what law firms could do to improve mental health and prompt their lawyers to stick around, attorneys at all levels want reduced workloads. Their work is interesting and often rewarding—according to associate, partner and counsel responses to recent American Lawyer surveys—but a crushing workload with no opportunity to unplug often overshadows many lawyers’ personal lives and aspirations outside of the law.

Granted, U.S. law firms do offer reduced hours tracks, typically for lawyers with caregiving responsibilities or other personal circumstances. Some firms extend the offerings to all associates or all attorneys, including Fish & Richardson, Mayer Brown, and O’Melveny & Myers.

But American firms typically don’t publicize reduced-hour arrangements as available to all attorneys for any reason at any time.

Reduced-hour tracks are typically unavailable to first-year lawyers in Big Law, with firms valuing the developmental benefits of an immersive first couple of years over the potential benefits of flexibility.

But for midlevel associates and above, top law firms have offered reduced hour tracks for years, according to data the firms submit to NALP. A strong majority of the Am Law 25 offer alternative work arrangements, according to an American Lawyer review. Most note that such arrangements won’t preclude an associate from making partner, adding that the process may take longer.

However, across the pond, a leading law firm is now offering an arrangement that tracks with the pipedreams of overworked U.S. attorneys in Big Law.

In December, Slaughter and May announced it was formalizing a program dubbed “Switch On/Switch Off,” in which associates can book a chunk of time off that represents either 10% or 20% of their annual billable hour requirement. In return for being allowed to log off for one or two months, the associate receives a 1:1 reduction in compensation.