Biglaw

Top 50 Biglaw Firm Will Not Require Full-Time, In-Office Work For Associates In 2022

The end of the five-day, in-office work week starts soon at this firm.

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Associates are on pins and needles as more and more firms roll out return-to-office plans in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. After all, some top firms have yet to announce what they’ll be expecting of associates in terms of their in-office presence, leaving attorneys in limbo. One firm just salved its associates’ anxiety by announcing that they would not be required to return to the office on a full-time basis next year.

Willkie Farr — a firm that announced quite early on that it would not require any of its attorneys to return to the office for in-person work in 2021 — has now revealed its plans for its return to the office in 2022. Here are the details on the firm’s plans for a hybrid work environment (emphasis added):

Building on our earlier announcement that attorneys will not be required to return to the office through the end of the year, the Firm has determined that it will not require full-time, in-office work for attorneys in its US offices in 2022. Starting in January 2022, we will implement a hybrid work model that allows attorneys to work in the office at times and remotely at others, with the guideline that attorneys work in the office on average three days per week.

Due to the “growing number of attorneys in the offices” law firm leaders have seen this fall, Willkie is encouraging others to consider working from the office before year-end so they can reaquaint themselves with their routines and their friends. The firm will have technology on hand to “allow (without requiring)” associates to indicate whether or when they plan to be in the office. This new technology will first be made available in the firm’s New York office.

“It’s great,” one chipper associate said of the firm’s new in-office work policy. We agree. Only having to commute to the office three days a week, on average, does sound pretty great. Hopefully other Willkie associates are just as happy.

(Flip to the next page to see the memo from Willkie Farr & Gallagher.)

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.

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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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