9 to 5, for service and devotion

Hands up who regularly spends a day at the office and then, during the stressful commute home, experiences the dawning realisation that you could have done all that work without ever leaving the house?
For those whose hands are firmly raised, change may be on the horizon.

From the end of June 2014, the legal right to request flexible working is given to
any employee who has provided at least 26 weeks’ service to the same employer. Flexible working is about working in a way which suits
an individual’s needs – such as flexi-time, compressed working hours or working remotely. However, an employer can refuse an application for flexible working if it has a good business reason for doing so.

Should this change benefit junior lawyers, who inevitably require regular supervision and mentoring? Yes. Recently, I took the opportunity to interview a junior lawyer who had secured one day per week working from home. The actual day varies from week to week and is arranged around the demands of the clients and the needs of the team. This is pertinent, as it provides an opportunity for the junior lawyer to make important time management decisions;
a key skill which is needed to be a successful senior lawyer.

The lawyer I interviewed said that, on a personal level, flexible working has allowed them to manage their time far more successfully, and gives them
the ability to do more activities outside work, such as exercising and catching up with friends. They also found that, despite not having had the benefit of flexible working for very long, they were already much
less stressed.

Commercial law firms are not likely to instantly change their attitudes to flexible working. Nevertheless, in a climate where clients are increasingly expecting more for their money, it is important to reflect on the benefits that flexible working can bring to the firm, as well
as its employees; the Agile Future Forum (AFF) being a
case in point.

Led by Sir Win Bischoff, the AFF has 22 founding members which include some of the UK’s largest companies and several top law firms. They have found that, by enabling their respective workforces to become more agile, workforce costs can be cut by as much as 13 per cent. Even more critically, when Eversheds allowed employees the freedom to choose their own working model, they saw 28 per cent of staff reporting increased productivity and
14 per cent of staff seeing an increase in chargeable hours.

The recent revision to the
law seeks to reflect the shifting attitudes toward flexible working in the UK, but even if the only noticeable difference
is to encourage junior lawyers to spend less time in the office when their work could be done elsewhere, I’d wager that retention rates among the bigger firms might see a noticeable spike. Ultimately, the key to any tangible change will be down
to how many young lawyers
are brave enough to request flexible working. SJ

Donna O’Neill is a paralegal at Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co