Ropes and chains.

Lazy staff thinking its ok to have four day weekends, covid is over, get back to where you once belonged.

The clothes washing can wait, work needs to be done pronto.

It’ll be an incredibly easy decision to move to a a firm with more flexibility all other things being equal. The inconvenience is one thing but the feeling of the partners and management actively seeking to remove any small comforts from their staff is completely another thing and fully demotivating. Impossible to want to torch my weekends for people who obviously prefer FaceTime to everything else, including client service 

If you have a base salary that allows you to enjoy a reasonably comfortable life then you tend not to work for bonuses. 

Currently sounding like the least flexible firm in London now!! Just when families are used to a healthy work life balance, they rip it right from under you!! Considering the firm has navigated remote working seamlessly for the last 3 years it’s a struggle to understand why we are moving back in time rather than moving forward…. 

The worst paying ‘elite’ US firm in the city now has the least amount of flexibility for associates. Why would you stay? The gap between Boston and New York has never been wider.

Same thing happening at my firm, honestly the team is in a downward spiral. Associates busted their gut for the partners throughout the pandemic and now the partners are enforcing facetime with an iron fist while associates are still doing 1-3am finishes for them every other night. This is completely demotivating for associates, whose inevitable reaction is to try just a little bit less. This has created a vicious feedback loop where the partners crack down even harder, including on their performing associates. So now their performers are all very unhappy, if work suddenly picks up even more can’t imagine there will be many associates  who will stick around very long in this environment. It is what it is 

Two bit firm that nobody decent would work for in London for any reason other than money, giving yet another reason not to work for them. Will be great for staff recruitment and retention, I'm sure.

"It’ll be an incredibly easy decision to move to a a firm with more flexibility all other things being equal."

There, see! They just can't get the staff anymore!

Any minute now, not today but very soon, Gato is going to get up from his desk at Ropes where he definitely works and walk right out of the door to another shop that's desperate to pay him £150k to turn up when he pleases.

There's loads of those places, all over town, and they're desperate for bodies because there's so few lawyers around. You can't expect people to come into the office to pick up £100k+ anymore, those days are ancient history like the automobile which is also on its way out.

Skadden and Ropes will be history, any day now, apocalypse is nigh and the end is definitely coming soon.

When you're getting £150K as an NQ and know literally nothing, you've sold your life.  These firms can do what they want; there are 25 people queuing up for every job.  If you don't like, leave and go to a lifestyle firm.  

Firms increasing office attendance want to create more associate attrition. Red flag that business cannot support associate numbers, and this is an easy way to make them go. In fact, increased mandatory attendance hits hardest at senior associate level (i.e. people with families) - the people that cost more and the ranks where the more fat is after all the boom years.

There isn't 25 good people lining up for the jobs though, which is the very reason we had a salary war in the first place - it's actually been bloody hard to hire and attract good lateral associates.

"There isn't 25 good people lining up for the jobs though, which is the very reason we had a salary war in the first place"

Quite right!

That was absolutely nothing to do with marketing at the trainee end, it wasn't just NQ salaries, and it hasn't lead to bunched salaries all across the city with Associates sitting around wondering why they make only fractionally more than the clueless NQ sitting next to them. Which makes them easy moves to places offering far more cash.

So nobody sitting at a desk in a Silver Circle firm is about to jack it in and take a job for 30% more money at a US firm if that means coming into the office. Those associates are very happy with their static pay and don't want to leave. Call them up and ask if they want loads more cash and they'll just put the phone down on you. Guaranteed.

So all of these American places are doomed and will collapse very soon. Literally any day now because people won't accept top dollar in return for working at a desk any more or ever again.

Literally any day now.

Would never join a firm that has a four day policy in my current circumstances. All it shows is there is a current desire to drive attrition and the strategy is churn and burn. For US firms this is the general rule however   🚩 🚩🚩

@ anonymous 10:07 

My US firm has no issues whatsoever.  I guess we just pay so much money that we can clean out entire SC departments of Corporate associates where necessary (look at the number of SC/international trained associates in Latham London).  Money talks.  Gekko was right.  

Four days a week?! As a person who's in the office every day putting in a shift, I scoff at these lazy four- days-a-week office policies. 

This will not encourage retention and will lead to repeated short staffing because so many firms and organisations are offering flexibility. As a client I would not instruct a firm that is actively taking measures such as this to halt flexibility and progressiveness. R&G belongs to the history books, not the future. 

There are up to 50 applicants per place for certain US firms roles. What can associates bargain for?

Out of step with the market massively but I don’t think in reality that they will follow through on this unless there are people they want to get rid of anyway.    It’s very opaque.   High billers and performers will be retained regardless because the partners in their teams will demand that is the case.   Also partners in various teams will allow a more relaxed approach.   The cat is out of the bag regarding home working now.  It can’t be put back in.  Many firms are downsizing offices and offering flexibility and it has a massive improvement on morale.  

I'd say that most people would be very happy with just the base salary. I'm all for promoting healthy work-life balance for people who need their job to live. But if you want to earn Ropes&Gray type salaries (and bonuses), you may have to work Ropes&Gray style hours. There's no such thing as a universal human right to a healthy work-life balance AND a massive salary.

It's possible, of course, that such policies will cause good and productive people to leave. I'm sure they weighed that risk against the gains they hope to get from this. If it doesn't work as expected, they will find out soon. 

‘Any day now’ guy is almost as boring as Question Man.

Is there anything worse than sarcasm without humour?

I agree with some of the statements in the managing partners' email - in particular I agree that in-person mentoring is better than remote mentoring. 

But the disadvantages of reducing flexibility are huge.

For starters, a lot of Ropes associates (particularly the more senior ones with families) are pretty miserable about it. They are the young mums (and dads) who have learned throughout the pandemic to juggle massive billables expecations, raise young kids and keep their relationships going. And that is all made far more possible by flexible working. The Ropes and Gray policy committee are now asking those associates to see less of their kids and to put a greater burden on their support network - play that logic through and it will be no surprise if Ropes sees top talent leave or burn-out. At the very least, the Ropes and Gray partnership can rest assured that it has and will continue to have some very unhappy associates walking the corridors of London. The pandemic was not just a blip - it was a re-set of how working practices at the top-end of the legal industry can be. Or at least it should have been. 

It will also be a problem if that talent does leave, because what mid or senior level associate who either has a family or has any near-term aspirations of having a family will want to join Ropes, when a candidate can still gamble on a comparable law firm not implementing a 4 day office week? The only thing that will save Ropes' recruitment at the senior end is if White & Case, Goodwin, K&E etc follow Ropes and implement a 4 day office week. That, or the partners are just prepared to have a gap in the pyramid.

The mental health impact is worrying. Flexible working has given associates the means to deal with whatever they've got going on far better than the old days of 9am-1am in the office. Working for a US law firm places huge demands on associates - inevitably the deals will have US and/or APAC elements, and working out of London means that the emails never slow down day or night, so finding the time to step away and commute is difficult if partners' expectations are to be met. Flexible working helped that. 

But I think the point from the policy committee is: deal with it. We dealt with it in our day, so you need to deal with it. It's for the greater good of the firm. And you better, because if you don't, we might not give you your bonus.

Not sure what the pithy concluding remark is. [Emoji of woman shrugging shoulders and looking dejected] 

Seems pretty obvious if you take mega money as an NQ in a firm it probably isn’t going to offer you flexibility of a work life balance. Also Some also like being in an office.
 

That’s still the right decision for a lot of people as if you’re young and have no kids money may talk at that point. I mean if you don’t have rich parents how do you buy or even rent in London now.

In a different circumstance work life balance may matter more but not sure anyone should assume that is everyone’s position.

A totally remote staff frankly might be some peoples worst nightmare with no ability to socialise?

@Realism 10:53

True, but the vast majority of these 50 are speculative at best. Just ask Paul from S&S - Lords on about the diversity of hiring at S&S and then proceeds to hire exclusively Oxbridge candidates 

"There are up to 50 applicants per place for certain US firms roles. What can associates bargain for?"

Additional lubricant dispensers in the third floor toilets?

By which I mean 'bathrooms'.

Is it lawful for a firm to change your terms of employment unilaterally?

Don't worry.  As the rate of global warming increases the need for these kind of legal services will decrease.

Have you considered retraining for trial by combat?

Morale has never been lower at Ropes. It’s certainly doesn’t feel like the same firm that I joined a number of years ago.

Associates earning £150k + complaining that they have to actually attend an office instead of 'working' from home. The sheer entitlement is nauseating. 

I doubt there will be a stampede out of Ropes given the state of the recruitment market.

Partners earning £2m working associates 16+ hours a day to the absolute bone and expecting an extra 2 hours to be spent needlessly commuting when work can be completed seamlessly at home. The sheer entitlement is nauseating 

If you don't want to work for a firm that expects you to attend its swanky offices, don't. Want a City salary, work in the City. Not from the beach or countryside. It doesn't impress clients. They won't continue to pay ludicrous retainers for remote workers pitching up to Teams meetings in their pants. You're not more genuinely productive permanently working from your sofa. If you were, the firms in question would allow it.  

A lot of comments about moving to other firms that offer more flexibility. Time appears to be running out as more and more firms are tightening the screws and demanding everyone back in the office. 

True Realism 04 August 23 11:27 - it would be irrational not to hire exclusively Oxbridge graduates, given that they are the brightest candidates.

The number of 'lazy people wanting to slack at home' type comments is puzzling. Home is a place where you can get your head into the detail without constant interruption and a combination of this plus social/collaboration time in the office seems obviously desirable.

Dare I suggest that the 'back to the office!'  types are probably those who perch on the corner of your desk and waffle on about nonsense for 30 minutes when you're trying to get some drafting done?! 

@Seeing a downward spiral 04 August 23 09:38

Welcome to the legal sector. Seems like the associates at your firm are starting to realise the real nature of this profession.

"Dare I suggest that the 'back to the office!'  types are probably those who perch on the corner of your desk and waffle on about nonsense for 30 minutes when you're trying to get some drafting done?!"

Well I don't know. Can we suggest that the work from home forever types are entitled shut-ins who lack people skills and work ethic, desperately raging against the return to an environment in which their ceaseless malingering can't be hidden behind their 'Busy' status on Teams, and who know full-well that the jig is up once the flexible work policy is revoked because nowhere else will actually take them?

The article says: "The firm did not respond to questions as to whether the new policy will apply to partners or business services staff." 

Question for Ropes & Gray staff - does anyone know if 4 days in the office applies to Business Services staff and Partners too?

It's one thing to pay your lawyers a fortune and demand them to come in 4 days a week, but I can imagine that if the Business Services staff (on a fraction of the pay) are asked to do the same, there will quickly be an exodus, as their loyalties are less likely to be tied to the firm (client base etc not relevant).

It could also be a problem when the Firm is trying to recruit Business Services staff - some of them won't be on huge money, or able to afford to live in London, so having flexibility for childcare etc may be part of the package they're looking for and they won't go somewhere that insists on 4 days in the office.

Also it will be interesting to know if the 4 day policy applies to Partners. Or if they're staying in their mansions in Surrey for most of the week but expecting the Associates to trudge in and do the grunt work in the office! I don't reckon that will go down well!

"N 04 August 23 11:47

Is it lawful for a firm to change your terms of employment unilaterally?"

Whose contract is being changed? Unless all of the staff were hired as remote workers then I suspect all of their contracts say the place of work is in the office, in which case 4 days is fewer days than their contract says.

Also, the report is that bonuses won't be paid if you don't work in the office at least 4 days, bonuses are discretionary anyway, you could still work from home you just then won't get a bonus

Obviously virtually every associate absolutely hates this.  We weren't meaningfully consulted - it was imposed on us by the policy committee who will always have their own way.

We're all miserable most of the time but somehow they think everything's wonderful and we're all superstars.  Mental health for many of us is at an all time low.

We're also probably the only US firm that doesn't pay on a US scale until end of year when you get compensated if you bill 1900.  It locks you in, at a time when they're stealthing people left right and centre.

STAY AWAY.

Recruitment agents' phones are burning...

If you're working a 14-hour day and available at US working hours (i.e until 11pm), then you really need to skip the commute to service the client properly - susprised the firm doesn't understand that this benefits the firm and the clients.

If you want to read what it looks like to work incendiary hours for years, read “Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy.” I read it just after I left a US firm and it reaffirmed my decision.

@Question for Ropes & Gray staff

If they're expecting non fee-earners to do 4 days a week too, Ropes had better have budget for some very big pay rises for the Business Services staff!! 

I can feel the panic as people type, moaning about having to get out of their pj’s and leave the house. 
 

playtime is over folks.  4 days a week in the office is coming. Bit by bit. 
 

and I’m loving it. 
 

Generally I’m very supportive of the working from home model with flex.

However, you need to take into account the nature of the firm you are working for and what they pay.

This is Ropes, people. They pay top dollar and are still essentially a US firm at heart. They pay you handsomely but they own you. On that deal, 4 days a week in the office is actually very fair. I imagine there will be some exceptions to the general rule - but for most - if you signed for a US firm such as Ropes, you don’t get to sit there and moan about working from home.. You want that right, go to  the regions (where they pay less but work life and flexibility are better). You can’t have everything. 

This is a sadomasochistic move from a management that wants to show control and beast the lawyers. Firm should be rebranded to: (Bondage) Ropes & (Fifty Shades of) Gray.

"One of the most flexible options in the City is at DAC Beachcroft which allows staff to work remotely full time. However, on the flip-side, when it comes to salary, DAC Beachcroft NQs in London are on a minimum salary of £70k."  

£70-80k as an NQ with great work/life balance and ability to WFH whenever you want is a very good deal in my view.  

If you work past midnight does that count or not?

So what you're probably not aware of, let's just say from an Financial Controlling perspective, needing to reduce headcount, its a nice an easy way to get some good cost savings through natural attrition associated with bringing people back to the office. I know many peers in the back office finance functions also making the same moves within their firms.

November will be crunch time when I know, secretly that there will be several firms that will be announcing the back to office model - and that will be when I hand my notice in and head to more of a lifestyle firm.

The thing is, where else are you going to earn that sort of money at that age.  However much you may feel you deserve it, the number of jobs where you can do that are limited.  So if 4 days a week in the office offends you so much, make your escape plan, do it till you're 35 and then get out with your mortgage paid of and enough capital to do something that interests you.

Otherwise leave now and go work somewhere outside of London, where you can live a brisk walk from the office and go home for lunch and at 6pm.  With R&G on your CV you shouldn't find it too hard to do that.

This may come as a surprise to some of you but life is not an endless procession of getting what you want.

Hi, it’s me again, Morgan Freeman - famous actor. I recently saw OC’s big strategic blunder, and now see that other firms are following suit. Anyway, back to my acting now. 

Only 4?

Curious to know if people think this is genuinely being done to increase attrition? I think it will be most likely to impact and demoralise their high performers the most who already generally have the longest hours. Surely firms have thought of this… I can’t imagine firms would be happy if their best associates leave for more flexibility and they are left with the non-favourites. Good people always have options regardless of market conditions…maybe firms just don’t realise because people aren’t complaining in the current climate? 

What’s hilarious about DACB and the 70-80k comment for NQs, is that Partners earn £80-85k in the northern offices like Leeds. 
 

This means 25 year old NQs earn about the same as their supposed 40-45 year old bosses 180 miles north. 

@ Minors - there are a lot of people in a lot of businesses who consider themselves irreplaceable or too valuable to lose.  In almost every single case management doesn't agree and when put put to the test management is right.

In the unlikely event that there is someone that management feels they can't lose and that person is so upset by the changes that s/he gives notice then allowances will be made for that one person.  Until they can be replaced.  Then they will find the leash shortening or they might even be managed out.

Unless they've changed a lot since my time there, law firms do not handle dissent well.

Totally agree no single associate is irreplaceable and I don’t think people genuinely see themselves that way at all or expect exceptions to be made for themselves.. that’s why they’d just leave.

More a question if the partners are really happy to be left with the B teams… no single associate is irreplaceable but a handful of the best ones going would certainly make a difference.

It’s precisely the best ones most likely to leave in the market because this affects them the hardest and they naturally have the best exit options. So I wonder if partners have really thought this though..

@ minors - you sound like a bit of a fantasist mate.  Have you ever moved firm?

It's not a small thing you know, deciding to move from one to another.  And coming from R&G you'll have your work cut out just trying to match the salary. 

Plus you'll have to come up with a good reason to explain why you want to leave. 

NB  I thought coming in to the office for 4 days a week instead of 3 is NOT a good reason.

The idea that having to come into the office 3 days a week instead of 4 is going to prompt a mass exodus is laughable.

No-one will be walking out of their £150k - £200k a year jobs until they've got something certain to move on to, and that doesn't happen in a hurry even if they start looking today and find the job they want next week.  And then there will be hoops to jump through and other people competing for it. 

Seriously, how many people do you think are going to leave all at once, and do you honestly think that what you call the B team couldn't step up and fill the gap.  Some of them may be glad to see the back of their fellows and be glad to have the opportunity to move into the space.  Some of them may well be better than those who suck up all the oxygen.

In a second rate tv drama "all the good people leave at once".  In real life they stay and make sure their lives and homes and salaries are secure and give months of notice and detailed handover notes.

"Totally agree no single associate is irreplaceable and I don’t think people genuinely see themselves that way at all or expect exceptions to be made for themselves.. that’s why they’d just leave."

They don't though, do they?

Most of them just carp on about how 'any day now' they'll be up and gone, but then stay sat in the same seat for the next three years cranking documents just like they've always done.

Junior lawyers have shown for several decades that they're willing to endure back-breaking hours and multi-day shifts in the office in return for the 'prestige' of being a City lawyer and the distant carrot of partnership. If they leave, there's a queue of twenty to take their place.

A small core of entitled stay-homers want that to be about to change. They wish that the scales had tipped. They'd like it if partners had to let them WFH forever. They're frantically telling themselves that firms that don't give in to their demands will struggle to find people and that the industry needs to bend to their preferences. But the obvious truth is that the market is reverting to norm and all of the 'any day now' fearmongering about the sky being about to fall in on firms that don't give in to their demands is an impotent tantrum in the face of the inevitable.

The partners will tell you to come back in, and you'll either do that and progress, or refuse and stagnate / be replaced by the endless conveyer-belt of talent that rolls into the profession each year. "Oh but what about rare specialist senior associates who..." stop it already, if there's a temporary disruption to supply the partners will bung another £50k at the problem and a suitable candidate will magically find the commute acceptable.

The 'best' associates aren't going anywhere (they're workaholics, which is what makes them the best at being City lawyers). The only places they're off to are (a) ones which pay them more cash, or (b) ones which give them firmer prospects of partnership. 

Howl and rage against it, but market forces are going to oblige you to go back to the office.

didn't realise what a horlicks I made of my post at 06 August 23 19:58

Sort of good stuff but if I can translate

NB "I thought coming in to the office for 4 days a week instead of 3 was too much" is NOT a good reason.

The idea that having to come into the office 4 days a week instead of 3 is going to prompt a mass exodus is laughable.

There.  Now it makes sense.

There's a reason why so many associates grumble about their work and there's a reason why law firms pay 25 and 30 year olds more than managers in other businesses who are more than twice their age and have 50+ subordinates.

Yes, you get beasted and you do stupid hours but yes you get paid silly money for it.  It's probably still easier money than managing a big branch of Tesco.

I don't believe anyone will leave.  If they do they won't be missed.  It doesn't work like that.  Less than a week after they've gone most people won't even remember they were ever there.

Ive seen a lot of mention of SC firms

but is working at a Magic circle law firm (like Links etc) better than working at a place like Ropes and Gray

"Market forces" work both ways.  People move firms all the time, especially the "best" associates.

And there isn't an endless supply of associates.  That is why there was a salary war last year and firms offer bonuses, pensions, cycle schemes, mat/pat leave, bring your dog to work day etc. Firms that enforce face time too vigorously give themselves a competitive disadvantage in the market place. 

If you're an MC PE associate with two offers, one from Ropes (mandatory four days in the week) or Fried Frank (three days in the office "recommended"), which would you choose? And on the litigation side, isn't QE's "work from anywhere" policy rather tempting?

WFH is here to stay. 

There's a reason dinosaurs became extinct.

Management should be wary of drivong people away - they need to understand that if you lose a critical mass of good staff, it becomes a death spiral - I give you Halliwells, Dewey, KWM. You have fixed premises costs and unless you can generate the revenue, you can't pay decent wages, if you cannot pay decent wages, you don't get good people, the work doesn't get done or gets done badly - and off the cliff you fall.

@ Minors.  Where are they going to go?  Who is making lateral hires at R&G wages?  What are R&G associates offering that the firms paying the same money don't already have?

Never realised so many roffers were DM and Telegraph readers. 

Law firm bonuses are very poor - a smidgin of the revenue bought in. I’d rather WFH thanks all the same.