I am starting this thread because I feel this is a serious issue on its own. Apart from its direct impact on the mental and physical wellbeing of the over worked lawyers (who learn to celebrate this culture!), it also has several indirect impacts such as nepotism, favoritism, gender discrimination, massive variation in pay scales, tax theft, etc.
Law firms would never keep a four-day work week that Modi is proposing because clients also won't keep to a four day work week and courts won't either. Working weekends and 24x7 is too deeply ingrained in law firm culture also in the US and UK.
You can blame hourly billing incentivizing working more or the law firm promoter model where there is an incentive to squeezing out as many hours as possible out of retainers or you can blame unrealistic client demands.
The only way this can change is if some of the promoters and senior partners see this working less and smarter as a virtue in its own right but the current generation has all been raised on the work hard till you drop mindset unfortunately. This may sound very negative but I have worked in this industry for 10 years and don't see it changing but I would welcome ideas from people on how to begin making such a change.
I think that client expectations are to blame here. For law firms, even if some of them were to start implementing a strict policy of leaves/ time off etc, there is always the chance of losing business to a competing team in another law firm that would be ready to cater to every whim of the client including working overtime/ working weekends to get maximum done in least amount of time. Hence, I think it is clients that need to consciously push for working with firms that do not abuse their associates.
However, realistically speaking, this is an extremely improbable scenario since money is the only factor that guides everybody's decisions in this industry - whether the clients or the law firms themselves..
>The accountancy firm’s UK chair, Bill Michael, who has headed the company since 2017, told staff to “stop moaning” during a virtual meeting about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. He also called unconscious bias, which many businesses have attempted to confront through changes to their training and recruitment practices, “complete and utter crap”.
You can blame hourly billing incentivizing working more or the law firm promoter model where there is an incentive to squeezing out as many hours as possible out of retainers or you can blame unrealistic client demands.
The only way this can change is if some of the promoters and senior partners see this working less and smarter as a virtue in its own right but the current generation has all been raised on the work hard till you drop mindset unfortunately. This may sound very negative but I have worked in this industry for 10 years and don't see it changing but I would welcome ideas from people on how to begin making such a change.
However, realistically speaking, this is an extremely improbable scenario since money is the only factor that guides everybody's decisions in this industry - whether the clients or the law firms themselves..
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/13/as-kpmgs-boss-has-learned-caring-about-employees-is-now-cool
>The accountancy firm’s UK chair, Bill Michael, who has headed the company since 2017, told staff to “stop moaning” during a virtual meeting about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. He also called unconscious bias, which many businesses have attempted to confront through changes to their training and recruitment practices, “complete and utter crap”.