Biglaw

Top 10 Biglaw Firm Plans To Fully Reopen Its U.S. Offices In November

The firm 'strongly encourages' vaccination for all employees, but still hasn't mandated it.

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The pandemic has taken the legal profession through some very unexpected twists and turns. From closing down in-person working environments and moving to remote spaces for more than a year’s time and now trying to return to the office and having to reschedule those plans and reschedule them again, many firms are trying to do their best to move on with life while keeping all of their employees healthy and well.

Earlier today, we mentioned one top law firm that will partially return to the office on November 1. Now we know of an even more prestigious firm that plans to make a full return on that date.

Sidley Austin — a firm that brought in $2,462,935,000 gross revenue in 2020, placing it at No. 6 in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — sent out a memo to U.S. personnel on Friday to let them know that they’d be returning to the office on November 1. Here’s an excerpt from that memo:

We are targeting Monday, November 1 to return to offices on a regular basis. … Our firm has embraced vaccination recommendations and health and well-being protocols, and our August survey of all U.S. personnel indicated that approximately 93% of all personnel (lawyers and staff) are fully vaccinated; this percentage has likely increased since then.

The progress our country, our communities, and the firm have made and continue to make in managing the pandemic lead us to believe that — as one firm — with your cooperation and support, November 1 is a reasonable date for us to transition to in-person office activities (albeit with an approach that will be more flexible in many respects than our pre-pandemic operations).

So, how often will lawyers and staff need to be in the office? According to the Management Committee, before COVID-19, Sidley’s lawyers were “not expected to adhere to set office hours and really enjoyed a fair amount of flexibility in where and when they performed their work.” Lawyers will still have that flexibility, but in the interest of professional development and face-to-face collaboration, the firm is requesting that lawyers “make a dedicated effort to spend a majority of their otherwise normal work days each month (i.e., non-vacation and personal days) working from their assigned Sidley office and participating in office-related meetings and activities.” Lawyers will still be able to work remotely “from time to time, at their discretion.”

As for staff, they must be working “regularly” in the office by November 1, with the understanding that the firm is working on ways to provide greater flexibility to promote an enhanced work/life balance.

Sidley continues to “strongly encourage” all personnel to be vaccinated (read: there is no vaccine mandate at the firm), and going forward will operate with an eye toward maintaining compliance with the directive issued by President Biden for large employers. That said, unvaccinated individuals at the firm will be required to submit a negative COVID-19 test before entering the office, weekly.

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What has your firm announced as far as a reopening plan is concerned? The more information is out there, the more likely it is that firms will be able to establish a market standard for a return to work.

(Flip the page to read the memos from Sidley.)

As soon as you find out about the reopening plan at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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