A four-day week in law: would it work?

It has to be said, a four-day working week sounds pretty ideal – almost as good as a three-day weekend! But should we be taking the idea seriously, and how would it play out? Many of us are eager to know, including those with a career in law.

Some benefits have been suggested so far. Research by think tank Autonomy suggests a shorter working week could actually benefit productivity while reducing burnout and stress. But lawyers considering a four-day week should be cautious: packing your already-strict deadlines and heavy caseloads into four days rather than five could be a tight squeeze. In fact, rather than promoting work/life balance and employee wellbeing, it’s likely a four-day week would actually scupper true flexibility in the legal sector, and make the job even more demanding. But why? 

The courts 

The courts are the key drivers of culture in the legal sector – when they are operating, lawyers must be too. But it seems unlikely that the courts will adopt a four-day week anytime soon; really, the whole of society would need to do so first. So, could a trial that runs for a full five days ever be compatible with a lawyer who only works four of them? Probably not.   

Simply put, lawyers need to be at court to represent their clients, and court cases can drag on for months. The courts aren’t going to work around your schedule, so lawyers must be flexible.  

The clients  

Client satisfaction is key to any industry. But the way employees interact with clients differs from job to job. For workers in the gig economy, a four-day week won’t have an impact on client relationships because they are, for the most part, transient and temporary. Meanwhile, lawyer-client relationships are expected to last months or even years. So, lawyers who wish to work a four-day week could find that their client relationships are affected if the days you’re both working don’t match. 

We should also be thinking about how a four-day week could escalate the already-existing pressures on lawyers to be constantly available and never fully switched off. Client expectations can be tricky to manage, and the legal sector has been trying to tackle this for some time now: frameworks such as the Mindful Business Charter encourage lawyers to be more thoughtful about the way they interact with each other and their clients. We don’t want to undo this progress, but new issues could arise if your client is working a five-day week while you’re working four. Lawyers in this situation could see themselves rushing their work and giving risky advice to push cases through faster. Or, they’ll end up working the fifth day anyway – their weekend!  

The firms 

It’s all very well saying lawyers could work four-day weeks, but this could cause a bit of a headache if the firm itself is still operating for the full five days. Cover would need to be arranged constantly, and there would often be days where a mission-critical colleague is unavailable. Diary management could become a nightmare (even more so than it is now), and firms may find themselves forking out for extra support staff to assist with arranging cover and scheduling meetings in the few times that everyone needed is available. 

Not only would sourcing cover become a constant task, but so would doing the actual covering! We all know we’ll need to work harder when a team member is on annual leave but this isn’t an everyday scenario. Meanwhile, if all employees are taking an extra day off each week, the rest of the team will be picking up slack daily. This could have a negative impact on employee productivity and satisfaction – lawyers don’t want a blizzard of work coming through because they’re covering for other people.   

Where lawyers can work flexibly, however, they can ensure all their work is done so their colleagues aren’t taking on a surplus. It also means fewer days are ruled out for meetings because if you are a flexible employer, your staff will be flexible with their availability – it’s a give and take situation. Managing partners should also be thinking about how a four-day week could affect workplace culture – let’s face it, no one wants to attend a work event on their day off! 

Conclusion 

All in all, a four-day week could work, but it could equally create a fragmented team experience and lead to burnout. Meanwhile, flexible working gives lawyers the option of working a four-day week when it suits them, without the pressure of having to cram all their work into fewer days. By embracing all working styles and allowing lawyers to work flexibly, people will feel less pressured and much happier.  

Marcin Durlak is managing partner at IMD Solicitors.