Law firms are often criticised for failing to nurture a diversified workforce and a supportive working environment for their assistant solicitors. But, as one high flying female lawyer and mother told a joint City of London Law Society (CLLS)/Legal Week roundtable, she has reached professional heights that were not available to her mother.

Yes, combining her role as managing partner of corporate at Allen & Overy (A&O) in London with bringing up a family has involved personal sacrifices for Susan Howard, but at least it has been possible.

The roundtable was convened to analyse a major survey of assistant solicitors that was published by the CLLS and Legal Week last November. It painted a bleak picture of life as an assistant solicitor in the City.

One in three of the 177 assistant solicitors
surveyed said they were intent on leaving the law as they struggled to cope with the long hours culture, unacceptable levels of stress and unrealistic billing targets.

Among the key findings were that 87% of the respondents suffered from high levels of stress; 62% missed billing targets; 45% regretted their career choice; 43% had witnessed bullying and 31% wanted to quit the law.

The panel – which was drawn from the management of a cross-section of City firms, clients and the ranks of assistant solicitors – agreed that the working conditions of City assistants had to be looked at in the context of the operating conditions faced by law firms.

Many practices are now at a very tough stage in the economic and business cycle and the competitive pressures they face – both in terms of keeping clients happy and maintaining satisfactory levels of profitability – are greater than ever before.
"We are in a highly competitive market and our clients are aware of that," said Ronnie Fox, senior partner at Fox Williams. "Clients have never been more demanding. They have high expectations and firms have to be clever about how they manage that demand."

Fox insisted that the majority of firms cared about the lifestyle of the people who work for them, not least because they are all competing for bright lawyers.

However, Jonathan Pearl, European head of legal at Sony, said it would be wrong to lay the blame entirely at the door of the demanding client. "It is not particularly fair to blame it all on the client," he argued. "If law firms are over-servicing then we as clients end up paying more."

Pearl added that in-house jobs were no less stressful, but if there was a survey of in-house counsel they would largely say they enjoyed what they did. "It is something about the way private practice firms drive themselves," he said.

The panel felt that there was some justification to the view that 10 or 20 years ago, practising as a lawyer was more relaxed, easy-paced and consequently more enjoyable.

The faster pace of modern business life, thanks to new technology such as the mobile phone and e-mail, had put paid to that, while remuneration expectations had ratcheted up the pressure on fee earners.

However, Fox suggested that there was never a golden age when legal practice was relatively free of stress.

"My belief is that most of the stress is generated by the nature of the job and not because firms are overloading people," he said. "You do not get the best out of people without some strain."

One reason that was identified as contributing to assistants' disillusionment and stress was the wide gap between their expectations of what life as a City lawyer would be like and the reality. Many potential trainees do not know what they are letting themselves in for, with a number applying simply because their friends have applied.

As a result they are often shocked by what a career in law actually involves, according to Jay Surti, an assistant at Davies Arnold Cooper. "The career appears glamorous, but when you get in there the reality is about putting down seven chargeable hours a day," she said.

Although it was recognised that a degree of stress was an inevitable part of a well paid but demanding job, panel members believed that firms were genuinely trying to address lifestyle issues and improve their assistants' working conditions.

One area where it was felt firms had made progress in recent years was in changing attitudes towards flexible working.

But, according to the CLLS/Legal Week survey, there remains an as-yet unmet demand to work flexible hours.

More than two-thirds (68%)of the respondents to the survey said they would like to work flexitime. However, just 2% said that they actually did so, and only 14% said that their firms had flexible working schemes in place.

These findings suggest either that lawyers remain reluctant to apply to work flexibly – perhaps because of concerns it might be viewed as a lack of commitment – or that firms are not widely promoting their schemes.

Howard said that A&O had recently seen much greater demand for flexible working than part-time working. She herself now works from home on Fridays, giving her the chance to take her children to school and pick them up. "At Allen & Overy we are happy to offer that flexibility, whereas a few years ago that would have been entirely unacceptable at most City firms," she said.

When considering any new working arrangement, Howard said it was a question of balancing the needs of the individual lawyer, their colleagues and the clients. On these criteria, flexible working was generally easier to implement successfully in a City law firm than part-time working. She warned there was a danger that in seeking to
accommodate the wishes of one lawyer to work part-time, you could overload those colleagues who are working full-time.

Margaret Bradburn, head of human resources at Eversheds, acknowledged that the ability to successfully work part-time depended largely on the area of law that the individual in question practised. She said transactional work such as corporate did not lend itself readily to part-time work, while it was more feasible in other areas such as commercial contract law.

"Clients do accept that people might want to work part-time – they will undoubtedly have part-time workers themselves," she said, adding that in the past law firms may well have attempted to cover up the fact that someone was working this way.

Aside from the wider promotion of initiatives such as flexible working, panel members felt that firms could still do more to address lifestyle issues and reduce stress.

They agreed assistants could achieve a better work/life balance if they were given more training in how to manage their workloads. In particular they needed to be shown how to obtain the benefits of technology and to use e-mail and mobile phones in a way that meant that they reduced rather than added to the pressures of the job.

Howard said A&O had been looking at the issue of technology in preparation for its move to new premises in 2006. "We are looking at what technology will be like in 2010 rather than 2006," she said. "I find it equally terrifying and equally liberating. It is all built around accessibility at any moment and the trick will be to exploit that successfully."

Howard said she hoped this new technology would give people more flexibility in managing their working lives and added that, ever since the advent of the mobile phone, lawyers were now pretty much consistently on call.

"Teaching people how to work smarter is the way forward," Howard added. "The ability to multi-task is a key aspect of working in law. I think that lawyers in private practice have to develop skills that allow them to do this."

Another area where it was thought that improvements could be made was in the training of management and partners to deal with issues such as motivation, stress and career development among their staff.

In the CLLS/Legal Week survey more than one in four (27%) of the assistants complained of a lack of supervision. The same proportion said that they were unable to raise their concerns with their partners and their line managers. Meanwhile, nearly half (46%) said that they felt unappreciated by their firms.

Pearl said he knew that his company, Sony, valued him and what he did, and that this was something he did not feel when he was in private practice. "You meet partners in their mid-50s who are charming to the client, but who you know are an absolute pain to work for," he said. "It reminds me of the saying 'the beatings will continue until morale improves'."

He suggested that much of this stemmed from the fact that lawyers were given insufficient training in the art of managing a team with little or no schooling in how to praise people or to give feedback. He also questioned whether partners were good role models when it came to work/life balance. "Are partners taking their three month sabbaticals? Are they leaving the office at a reasonable time?" he asked. "I suspect not."

But the private practice lawyers sitting around the table said this was now changing and that over the past five or so years firms had placed much greater emphasis on developing their partners into better managers.

"Training in the past used to be 100% on black letter law," said Fox. "Now it is much more skills-based, focusing on how to relate to clients and how to manage a team. There has been a very big change."

He added that clients were very aware of how partners dealt with their assistants and assessed those partners' management skills when deciding which firms to instruct.

Eversheds' Bradburn said that in every firm there were undoubtedly still partners, thankfully becoming fewer in number, who treated assistants inappropriately and there was a danger that assistants and trainees would replicate their behaviour. At most City firms, however, treatment of staff is now part of a partner's appraisal and so this behaviour was gradually being tackled.

Consultant Tony Williams, former managing partner at Clifford Chance and Andersen Legal, argued that it was nevertheless rare for partners to receive the ultimate sanction if they failed to manage their assistants properly. "Partners get asked to leave for inadequate financial performance or if they upset a client, but rarely for their mentoring performance," he said.

It was agreed that one practical area where management and partners could make a difference was in ensuring that, as far as possible, lawyers take their full entitlement to holidays and when they do take a break, they do not take work with them.

In the CLLS/Legal Week survey more than one in five assistants (22%) admitted they did not take all their annual leave, while more than half (54%) said they worked on holiday. Among those who qualified in 1997 or before, the number working when on holiday rose to 70%. According to Professor Cary Cooper, Bupa professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, this is much higher than other professions where the equivalent is closer to 30%.

Richards Butler managing partner Roger Parker said that the taking of holidays was a classic example of a leadership issue where partners could make an impact.

"Sometimes it is essential for someone to be contacted on their holiday, but that is rare in the larger firms," Parker said.

Leadership could also be shown when it came to the impact on assistants of billable hours targets. Only 38% of assistants in the survey said they always met their targets – a likely contributor to stress levels, job security worries and potential 'padding' of bills.

"People receive regular information as to whether they are meeting targets," said Parker, "and that puts pressure on some people. It is a question of emphasis and education and management are key."

Fox said one of the reasons for having targets, where they are used properly, was to ensure individual workloads did not get too high.

"It is not efficient to have two people in neighbouring rooms where one is working 12 hours a day and the other is only working three," he said. "You can stop people becoming overworked. You can identify where there are pressures so that the situation can be properly managed."

However, Williams warned that the broader message was being neglected. He said many firms still had a culture that saw assistants who worked unusually long hours lauded as star performers rather than as people who were taking too much on.

The panel agreed that while some progress had been made, much more work was required in this area.

While it is now possible for a wider range of people to reach the top of their firms, the suspicion remains that the personal sacrifices many are being asked to make are unacceptably and unnecessarily high.