Small Law Firms

Law Firms Should Not Use Secretaries To Monitor Attorneys

This seems like a wasteful practice.

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As many law firms force attorneys and staff back to offices, numerous shops are employing methods to ensure that attorneys are following return-to-the-office policies. Some law firms are holding mandatory meetings so that partners can see who shows up on a given day. This seems like a wasteful practice since such meetings often have little value other than determining who was in the office on a given day (so I’m told). I have also heard recently that some law firms are tasking secretaries and other administrative professionals with monitoring attorneys so that work-from-office policies are followed.

Using secretaries to keep tabs on associates is nothing new, and I was aware of this phenomenon since the beginning of my legal career. About a decade ago, I worked at a Biglaw shop in an office that had numerous lawyers and staffers. People had relatively free reign to come and go as they pleased, which was important since numerous attorneys needed to attend depositions, court appearances, and other off-site functions. However, it was a habit of some attorneys to not be in the office even though they did not record this time as paid time off. That firm let people bank their PTO, and also paid attorneys for four weeks of PTO when they left the firm, so the firm had a vested interest in knowing whether an attorney was recording time as PTO.

In any case, one time, I passed by a secretary who had a strange spreadsheet up on her computer. The spreadsheet had all of the attorneys for whom the secretary did work. I asked about the strange spreadsheet, and the secretary told me in a hushed tone that secretaries at that firm were tasked with recording which attorneys were in the office each day. If an attorney was not in the office, and had not recorded the time as PTO, there might be some follow up to determine whether the time should have been recorded as PTO.

I did not like a few things about this policy. Perhaps most importantly, the firm was not being open and honest with people who worked at this shop. It is clear that the firm wanted to keep this policy under wraps since it would be easier for attorneys to game the system if they knew that secretaries were keeping tabs on them. I generally believe that sunshine is the best disinfectant (which is a quote by the namesake of my alma mater!) and that law firms cannot build trust with the people who work for them if they are not transparent with those people. To build more trust, law firms should not try to keep surreptitious monitoring from associates and should be up front with their employees.

Also, using secretaries to monitor associates can impact the team mentality of a law firm. In order for law firms to be most effective, all of the professionals who work at a shop need to rely on each other. Each person on a legal team has a given role that they can perform best, and legal professionals need to rely on each other in order to best serve clients. People might hold a grudge against people who are surreptitiously monitoring them and might not be as confident in their teammates if the law firm for which they work is creating an “us versus them” mentality.

Ideally, law firms would just have a relaxed approach to office time, and then shops would not need to keep tabs on attorneys who show up to an office. However, law firms can take other approaches if they insist on keeping tabs on associates and whether lawyers show up to an office. Perhaps the easiest way for law firms to keep tabs on attorneys is just to have a partner walk the halls of an office and see who is at a shop on a given day. If partners are not showing up to an office so that they cannot perform this function, it would be unfair to expect other attorneys at a firm to be at the office. Since there is already a supervisory aspect to the associate-partner relationship, having partners keep tabs on associates should not impact the team dynamic between associates and secretaries.

Being a law firm secretary is hard enough without partners tasking secretaries with policing work-from-the-office policies. Accordingly, partners should either assume the responsibility of monitoring associates or drop such policies altogether.

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Rothman Larger HeadshotJordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothman.law.

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