City law firm ties bonuses to office attendance
Junior lawyers at law firm A&O Shearman have been reminded that bonuses may be affected if they fail to comply with the office attendance policy.
Like many others, the firm has a policy that lawyers must be in the office at least 60 per cent of the working week.
However, as reported by The Times, a memo was sent to the associates of the London office in recent weeks, reminding them of the rules.
The memo from the top articulated that bonus eligibility would at least be “affected” for failing to meet office attendance targets.
A starting base salary at the firm is £150,000 for newly qualified (NQ), with the potential for bonuses for meeting criteria, including billing at least 1,750 hours.
The firm had one of the most significant combinations in decades last May after magic circle law firm Allen & Overy merged with New York firm Shearman & Sterling.
The newly merged firm created a global giant with revenues of around $3.5bn, significantly boosting the magic circle’s presence in the US market.
Following the hybrid working policy introduced in most corporate offices in 2020 following the onset of the pandemic, there has been a slow move back to more of an office presence.
Back in January 2024, a leaked email by the then managing partner of magic circle firm Slaughter and May showed the firm was clamping down on lawyers who weren’t turning up to the office by tracking their attendance. Soon after, Clifford Chance started to monitor their lawyers’ office attendance more closely.
In parts of corporate life there has been a clamp down in recent months on flexible working policies, with banking giant JP Morgan putting an end to its policy and ordering all 316,000 workers to return to the office full-time.
In a recent Eyes on the Law column Nick Woolf, partner at Woolf&Co told City PM that “there is no doubt that City law firms have, without necessarily mandating it, started pushing harder for lawyers to be in four days a week more often than not.”
A&O Shearman declined to comment.