The Big Law Message to Associates
In what’s becoming a familiar tune across BigLaw, A&O Shearman is now wielding the bonus stick to ensure their office chairs don’t remain empty. The recently merged firm has reminded its London associates that failing to meet the firm’s 60% in-office requirement could leave their wallets lighter come bonus season.
The major trans-Atlantic merger was announced in 2023.
According to The Times, management didn’t mince words in their recent memo to London associates, making it crystal clear that bonus eligibility would be “affected” for those who can’t manage to drag themselves into the office three days a week.
The Times also reported a month ago that 105 partners have left or been sacked from the firm since the merger with A&O was announced, mostly from the UK-side of the firm.
And with newly qualified associates starting at a hefty £150,000 base salary – plus potential bonuses for hitting those 1,750 billable hours – there’s serious cash on the line.
This hardline stance comes less than a year after Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling tied the knot in one of the legal industry’s most significant combinations in decades.
The merger created a $3.5 billion global powerhouse, dramatically expanding the magic circle’s American footprint.
The post-pandemic return-to-office crusade has been gaining momentum throughout the City. Earlier this year, Slaughter and May caused a stir when a leaked email revealed they were tracking lawyers’ office attendance like anxious helicopter parents.
Clifford Chance quickly followed suit with their own attendance monitoring scheme.
The legal industry isn’t alone in its flexibility crackdown. Banking giant JP Morgan recently killed its flexible working policy entirely, ordering all 316,000 employees back to their desks full-time.
As Nick Woolf of Woolf&Co noted in City AM, “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.”
When approached for comment, A&O Shearman executives were presumably too busy checking badge swipes to respond.
