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Biglaw firms are mandating office attendance across the country, and while some are holding bonus eligibility over associates’ heads, others now seem to be doing something that could be considered even more drastic. Some attorneys are hurting for billable hours, and the best way to get them at this Am Law 100 firm is to head to the office, because that’s where partners will be assigning them to associates.
Cozen O’Connor — a firm that brought in $619,017,000 gross revenue in 2022, putting it at No. 74 on the Am Law 100 — has suggested that its attorneys spend three days in the office each week, and is now suggesting that partners favor those who are complying with the firm’s return-to-office policy when it comes to handing out work.
Here are some additional details from the Legal Intelligencer:
“What we have said is we will encourage partners to give work to those who are in office,” said firm executive chairman and CEO Michael Heller. “But obviously client needs and services are top priority. … We will allocate work based primarily on who is best able to handle it.” …
Instead [of going after bonuses], the firm is looking to “really impact those who made the decision that they don’t agree with our position that being in the office is better than not being in the office, and they’re making the unilateral decision to stay out of the office,” Heller explained.
As far as the firm threatening associate bonuses based on their office attendance, Heller said, “[W]e don’t want to go there. Bonuses are based on lots of information—it’s not a quantifiable, formulaic measure for us.” (But aren’t those bonuses based, at least in part, on billable hours, which will now be more difficult to obtain if associates aren’t in the office?)
Heller went on to tell the Legal Intelligencer that Cozen has learned that the “quality of work is not necessarily impaired by being in office or not in office,” and yet, this new billable-hours policy for partners still came to be.
On the plus side, Heller did note that Cozen will never have an official attendance mandate because he assumes that “the significant majority of our lawyers will comply with our encouragement and expectations.” While a number of other firms have moved into requiring four days of office attendance each week, Heller said that the only thing that’s certain for his firm is that the five-day in-office work week is over.
“I don’t have a crystal ball to know whether we end up in a three-day or four-day schedule,” Heller said, leaving the firm’s options open when it comes to future attendance. “[But] I can say definitively the five-day workweek, in my judgment, will never resurface.”
Ultimately, Heller emphasized that the revision to the firm’s policy did not constitute a mandate, noting that the firm’s philosophy when it comes to its RTO policy is “to encourage people to get the best experience they can get as a lawyer at the firm.”
Cozen O’Connor’s new billable hours policy is one that may hurt attorneys even more than dipping into their bonuses for noncompliance with attendance requirements. Is your firm considering offering billable hours only to those who are present in the office? Please email us or text us (646-820-8477) and let us know.
Cozen O’Connor Looks to Favor Officegoers in Work Allocation [Legal Intelligencer]
Staci 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 and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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