Case study How Justitia embraced flexibility and reaped the rewards

Flexible work options can create an alternative to the traditional law firm workplace if there is management diligence and clear communication, writes Laura Douglas.

Long and inflexible working hours and a poor work-life balance are typically associated with a career in a law firm. The traditional law firm model is based on a rigid hierarchy and a highly competitive peer environment, in which career success is measured by your position in that hierarchy, the number of billable hours you record and the clients you manage. Time is perceived to be a crucial element in the formula for success in this model. The more billable time you record and the more time you visibly spend in the office and the company of clients, the better your chances of climbing the hierarchy to partnership. In other words, working at a law firm often requires the sort of time commitment that cannot accommodate flexibility. But must this always be the case?

In 2005, Mary-Jane Ierodiaconou and Sarah Rey founded Justitia, a specialist employment law firm based in Melbourne. Mary-Jane and Sarah had years of experience working to the demands of the traditional law firm paradigm and both wanted to work differently. They had seen how a lack of flexible work options could lead to the dissatisfaction of male and female lawyers in the profession. The challenge for Mary-Jane and Sarah was to build a law firm based on the understanding that flexible work practices neither diminish client services nor hinder career development.

How we did it
The solution for Justitia was to do more than simply adopt a reactive approach to flexible work. Traditional law firms and large organisations typically operate in this way: they wait for the employee to request a flexible work arrangement and then consider whether the operational requirements of the business can accommodate the request.

The problem with this approach is that it operates from the presumption that the default work practice is a full-time working week. Changes to this standard are considered to be ‘special’ arrangements that are only granted in exceptional circumstances. Such a process merely serves to further ostracise the employee from the norm: they are viewed as someone who is working differently. They inevitably feel indebted to the organisation for its ‘accommodating’ approach.

At Justitia, there is no standard work practice. Rather than begin from the presumption that all lawyers and support staff will work a standard full-time working week, Mary-Jane and Sarah presume that employees will work flexibly around their personal commitments. The work practices of each employee are recognised from the outset as being unique according to their own personal requirements. So when an employee starts at the organisation, the question asked is ‘How do you want to work?’ They call it the ‘presumptive model of flexible work’ and it is a model for which the firm has received industry recognition, most recently in the form of an award at the 2014 AHRI Inclusion and Diversity Awards.

Mary-Jane and Sarah will concede that this flexible working model requires diligent management – perhaps more than many partners are willing to take on. As managers, they need to exercise adaptive leadership and creative thinking, with the understanding that a workplace is not truly adopting flexible work practices if those arrangements are difficult to negotiate and harder still to change. Hours may vary and roles may change. The needs of one lawyer will be different to the next.

Communication counts
If work practices within the firm are understood to be fluid and changeable, it is critical that employees communicate effectively both with each other and with clients. This means that it is often necessary for more than one lawyer to be working on a file. The model cannot work if lawyers work in silos and guard their work from others. Lawyers have to be open to sharing information and working in a highly cooperative and collegiate environment. Not all lawyers are comfortable working like this and it cannot be assumed that it will work for everyone. For this reason it is important that the firm’s expectations around communication and knowledge-sharing are clearly set out in the recruitment process.

In a traditional law firm model, the pressure of budgets and reaching targets for billable hours often discourages cooperative work. Lawyers can feel that they will be penalised for sharing valuable work or information with colleagues. In order to encourage a collegiate environment and recognise the inherent value in sharing information and being accessible to one another, Mary-Jane and Sarah have found that it is necessary to change individual and team performance indicators and loosen the pressure on billable targets. A collaborative system of work also requires careful management of client expectations. For example, some clients need reassurance that having more than one lawyer across a file will not result in double fees being accrued.

Another issue for management is that the overhead costs of employing part-time lawyers are no different to employing full-time lawyers. Registration and membership fees do not change according to the work practices of the lawyer. In addition, the office space needs to be able to accommodate all lawyers and changes to their flexible arrangements.

Model delivers
Implementing a presumptive model of flexible work may seem like a big ask for many legal practices, but the experiences at Justitia suggest that the managerial effort required is worth it. Justitia’s model has been in place for 10 years. In that time, the firm has grown from a two-person partnership to a firm of seven lawyers and six legal research assistants and its flexible work model has been recognised as a point of distinction in an over-serviced legal market.

In 2013, Justitia was named ‘Law Firm of the Year’ at the Law Institute of Victoria Legal Awards. The application of innovative initiatives to improve staff development and wellbeing is an important element of the selection criteria for judging this award. A reputation for accommodating flexible work practices has also meant that Justitia has been able to attract and retain a broader pool of legal talent. The firm’s attrition rate is low and employees report that a progressive attitude to flexible work practices was a primary consideration in their decision to seek employment with the firm. Employees appreciate the benefits to their wellbeing that come from having a true work-life balance. In an industry that has come under the spotlight in recent years for the poor mental health record of employees, this is an important benefit of the model.

The feedback from clients has also been positive. Given the firm’s expectation around the level of communication both internally and externally, clients frequently develop relationships with more than one lawyer in the office. This means that clients have numerous contact points at the firm when issues arise and advice is required. The firm’s collegiate approach to working also has a beneficial impact on the quality of advice the clients receive. Knowledge of the specific circumstances of clients is shared within the team, as is the particular expertise of lawyers who have developed areas of interest in discrete fields. When lawyers work together, the expertise of one becomes the expertise of many. The result is that clients receive a better service and advice that is prompt, practical and tailored to their particular needs.

Justitia’s presumptive model of flexible work is a clear example of how flexible work practices can be incorporated into a successful legal practice with positive results. By committing to a model that eschews the standard full-time working week, Justitia has fostered a unique working environment that enhances the quality of its services and promotes a sustainable work-life balance for its employees.

Laura Douglas is a lawyer with Justitia, a leading employment, discrimination and labour relations law firm based in Melbourne. The firm works with organisations throughout Australia, delivering a full range of advisory and litigation services.
www.justitia.com.au