Staff At London Law Firm Can Work From Home Full-Time -- If They Take 20% Pay Cut (theguardian.com) 113
Staff at a top London law firm have been told they can work from home permanently â" but they will have to take a 20% pay cut. The Guardian reports: Managing partners at Stephenson Harwood are offering lawyers and other staff the option as City firms try to move beyond solely office-based working in a post-pandemic cultural shift to flexible and remote models. Junior lawyers at the company have starting salaries of 90,000 pounds, meaning anyone taking up the officer would lose about 18,000 pounds. Stephenson Harwood, one of the top 50 highest earning legal firms in the UK and with its headquarters in London, employs more than 1,100 people and has offices in Paris, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. A spokesperson for the firm told the Times that the new working policy would apply to staff at its London office and most of the company's international offices. Partners will not be eligible, though. Full equity partners receive an average of 685,000 pounds annually.
The new salary sacrifice for full remote working policy is being introduced after the company's experience of recruiting lawyers during the coronavirus pandemic who were not based in London, where living costs tend to be higher. However, the company said it expected only a few staff to take up the full-time work from home option because "for the vast majority of our people, our hybrid working policy works well." Staff already have the option of working remotely for two days a week. "Like so many firms, we see value in being in the office together regularly, while also being able to offer our people flexibility," the spokesman said.
The new salary sacrifice for full remote working policy is being introduced after the company's experience of recruiting lawyers during the coronavirus pandemic who were not based in London, where living costs tend to be higher. However, the company said it expected only a few staff to take up the full-time work from home option because "for the vast majority of our people, our hybrid working policy works well." Staff already have the option of working remotely for two days a week. "Like so many firms, we see value in being in the office together regularly, while also being able to offer our people flexibility," the spokesman said.
Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe you can find anther firm that lets you work at home full time, and gives you a bit of raise in salary to boot.
20% is way too much of a haircut, and any reduction is absurd when you stop and realize a full-time employee saves them money on office space!
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But it is a win-win for the lawfirms as well. Salary cut and less need for expensive offices, they would be so happy if they could pull this off.
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the job can be done more effectively and efficiently in person at the office,
Tell me you have never worked in a real office, without telling me you have never worked in a real office.
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There is absolutely no legitimate reason to pay someone less for working remotely.
The words of someone that doesn't know what they're talking about. I'll give you that there is little reason in many cases, but you said absolutely no legitimate reason. As someone working a job where there is a distinct difference in workload for people working remotely, I can say you're wrong. The same is similarly true for some of our other departments.
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So? Your pay shouldn't be based on where you work but how productive you are and how many hours you work. I expect to get paid exactly the same as someone else doing equal work.
I know for a fact I'm much more productive working from home because there are no people disturbing me all the fucking time. There are no people who want to chit chat when I get coffee, and to keep up social conventions, I have to stand there like an idiot making noises while bobbing my head.
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There are roles that can be more productive working rem
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I'm definitely all for people doing what works best for them, and fully agree with the potential of being more efficient. My whole point was specifically to counter the AC that said there is absolutely no le
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In the case of my IT jobs...that is absolutely NOT true.
Especially considering that 99% of the people I interact with daily are not local either, but spread out across the US....there is not a lick of difference in what I do if I were in the office vs working from home.
I'm sure it is job dependent, but nothing I've done in years is different based on my physical work location.
I could be doing the exact same thing
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I'm guessing you don't live in the UK and never have.
There's a thing called the "London weighting".. the reduction mentioned (20%) will largely be the absence of the "London weighting"
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Think about what message this sends to employees.
We can afford to pay you X. However, we think we only need to pay you Y, and would like to keep the difference for ourselves.
Doesn't exactly scream "you are a valued member of the team and we want you to share in the success of the company", does it?
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Actually, in the UK, your contract of employment will often specify your normal place of work. Your pay is based on all the conditions in your contract not just the hours.
You may not like that, but I think there definitely are occasions where it helps to be in the office. Furthermore, in some cases, there might be security concerns surrounding your work, particularly with personal data of your clients.
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Bzzzt, wrong. It *CAN* be done in person and historically was done in person but despite the cluster fuck that is the MoJ's IT service you can do e Filing now.
https://www.judiciary.uk/you-a... [judiciary.uk]
How do I know this, well I get to do IT support for my brother (a judge) when the MoJ's IT support falls short and he can't work it out for himself (he is pretty knowledgeable really). It's comical really how inept they are.
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A better link to Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal E-Filing system.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hm... [www.gov.uk]
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The OP is right though that if you want it done right, you better do it in person. A big customer isn't going to care that you failed to file on time because the IT system screwed up or the e-mail got lost.
Even in the US, although law firms can in most cases use couriers for this, it is generally done in person with actual stamps and signatures and paper than to rely on any (broken) e-system the court may have set up. E-system is for the plebs and traffic tickets.
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In the US, that would be accurate. US paralegals for the top 25% law firms (which it sounds this is the top 1 or 5% tier) make ~GBP 85,000 starting salary.
Attorneys start at ~GBP 150,000
What happens for mandatory office meetings? (Score:2)
So you take the pay cut... if you are called into the office, do they pay expenses?
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"So you take the pay cut... if you are called into the office, do they pay expenses?"
It's a law firm, for crying out loud. I'm sure it's covered.
Re: Or... (Score:2)
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I don't see why a 20% paycut should even be a thing.
If you are working from home, and nothing else has changed, you are using YOUR HOME resources instead of the Office. If anything you should be billing the office for your electricity and internet, and any additional HVAC costs from you being home. You are saving "the office" money. If you drive, you're saving yourself even more money by not having to pay for fuel and insurance on a vehicle, and if you can get rid of the car entirely, you save a lot of mone
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"In the UK you can get a tax rebate for such expenses, at least, although I have not claimed it."
Citation needed. PAYE employees don't get perks like rebates.
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Citation needed. PAYE employees don't get perks like rebates.
You do actually get a rebate. Saving you about 120 pound a year. A truly massive amount.
On the other hand, the company will in the long term safe an awful amount of office rent. I wonder seriously if theft of office stuff will be going down, since I'm not going to steal my own computer when I'm the only one with access to it. And other shenanigans won't happen because people can't hide in a big group.
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You can get more than 120 quid per year (actually,Âisn't it exactly: 6*0.4*52 = £124.80?) if you itemise everything. HMRC gives you the easy option of claiming tax relief on £6/week if you can't be bothered to itemise it all. I think you can also get the full £6/week (not just the tax relief) if your payroll team will deduct it for you via salary sacrifice. They made this available to anybody who had to work from home during Covid, in which case you didn't even ha
Re: Or... (Score:2)
It probably feels like an insult because in reality they probably donâ(TM)t want anyone accepting it. They provide an option to say it is there, so that box is checked, but they poison the option with pay cut.
Having worked with some remote teams I can tell you some people are terrible at remote work. Performance drops off and the team becomes less cohesive. On the other hand hard workers end up working too many hours.
Also in person social time does help, since it is not simply limited to team members.
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20% is way too much of a haircut, and any reduction is absurd when you stop and realize a full-time employee saves them money on office space!
On the other hand, you can live for about 38% less money for the same standard of living if you want to move from London to Cardiff [numbeo.com].
Like say you're into Dr. Who or Only Connect.
Real Or (Score:1)
On the other hand, you can live for about 38% less money for the same standard of living if you want to move from London to Cardiff.
OR you can make the same amount of money while moving to Cardiff because you are still working for a London based firm, and the amount of money a firm can afford to pay is based on where IT is located, not where YOU are located.
In no way should a salary be based on where you choose to live. It should be based on where a company is located and what it can afford to pay for wor
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In no way should a salary be based on where you choose to live.
And yet it is.
It should be based on where a company is located and what it can afford to pay for workers.
What has where the company is located got to do with it?
Not everywhere, and not for long (Score:1)
And yet it is.
Not everywhere. At the (very small) company I work for we have set wages for a role, and don't care where people live.
The rise of more and more people demanding to work from wherever they choose will make it impractical to choose wages based on where someone lives, because over time you will no longer get the best people, as more and more people are willing to pay for talent at a rate unmodified by where that talent choses to reside.
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In no way should a salary be based on where you choose to live.
And yet it is.
Salary must be sufficient to meet my needs. If the salary isn't high enough, I try to negotiate. If the negotiations fail, I pass.
It should be based on where a company is located and what it can afford to pay for workers.
What has where the company is located got to do with it?
A company chooses a city based on property value / taxes, expected salary, and talent pool. The do not budget for a lot of candidates demanding higher pay.
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The 20% decrease does sound crazy as a
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You'd also pay less tax, so it's not really 20%. If you didn't have some overwhelming desire to live in London, this sounds like a fantastic deal financially. It might be career suicide for a junior lawyer though.
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20% is way too much of a haircut, and any reduction is absurd when you stop and realize a full-time employee saves them money on office space!
if you live outside of London and commute in by train, this is about right...
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So you think it's worth being paid essentially the same (because it's cheaper to live outside London) but then ALSO having two hours of commute per day when you do go into the office.
No.
If you are good enough to work at a London firm, you should be paid wages to compensate, period. Otherwise just go work at a Cardiff firm and have no commute.
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So you think it's worth being paid essentially the same (because it's cheaper to live outside London) but then ALSO having two hours of commute per day when you do go into the office.
the whole point of the article is that they work full time from home and no longer spend the two hours commuting in... if they had to take a paycut and still come in thats shitty, but thats only something you just said
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Maybe there is a productivity drop off, but a lot of office work is just waiting. Most office workers will often just endlessly scroll ReddTwitFaceTok in between real work. Is that better?
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That's definitely not true for that type of law work (at least not in the firm's I've worked with).
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What I don't see in that complaint is any indication that they're not getting their work done or not putting in the hours that they're expected to per day. Just that they aren't 9-to-5-ing it as you demand.
Show that their productivity has actually dropped off to justify the pay cut. I'll wait.
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> Welp, they DID vote for Brexit, no?
Don't vote for Brexit. Workers from all over Europe are able to freely work for your company. Company institutes work from home and Eastern European workers with low cost of living drive wages down and you can't compete. No choice.
Vote for Brexit. Only workers from your country are able to freely work for the company. Company institutes work from home and you now have the choice of a 20% pay cut or work in the office. Two choices.
I'm not European, but does that
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...but does that summarize it?
No.
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No. Brexit to some degree limits immigration, i.e. people physically moving to the UK. It doesn't limit hiring people in other countries. I guess it could but it doesn't and isn't likely to.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Informative)
10 Immigrants terk er jerbs!
20 Get rid of der immigrrrnts!
30 Why crops not harvested? Why goods not driven from ports?
40 Goto 10
50 Realization among xenophobes that they shot themselves in the foot
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It would be like if Papa Deathsantis convinced Florida to vote to secede from the United States* on the basis that they would get better trade and better deals with the United States.
*yes I know this is not leg
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There were many support bases for Brexit:
* We can get better trade deals with the rest of the world outside of the EU
* We can keep the same trade deals we have with the EU when we leave
* We will be able to deport everyone who looks foreign
* We will be able to restrict immigration to only the people you want to live next to
* We will get rid of that person making minimum wage that you believe is responsible for you not being able to land a double minimum wage job
* We will be able to put more money into servic
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Exactly my perspective on this. Farms shouldn't be able to avoid labor laws and pay a slave wage to people to do work. This country ended slavery, everyone should be against people being exploited due to being in this country illegally. It is rather funny that the same group who fought a war to keep slavery is ok with modern day slavery though.
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Did you completely miss the post we were responding to? The person was trying to claim that people wonder why the fruit isn't being picked, which it would still not be being picked if suddenly that group was legal, as they wouldn't be able to be taken advantage of.
There are perfectly legal ways to enter this country, choosing to not do so is breaking the law, pointing that out is not anti-immigrant racism, it is pointing out that there are laws, and they are being broken.
sounds decent. (Score:3)
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350 pound a week reduction for not having to travel into London centre each week sounds like an awesome deal actually.
They can -expletive- off, and then -expletive- off some more, they can keep -expletive- off until they arrive at the edge of London, then continue to -expletive- off across Wales. Finally they can go -expletive- themselves.
I hate to say it, but the remote employee costs FAR less than the office employee in a professional setting even when you add in the VPN licensing. The square footage reduction of office space alone is a big boon. That's on top of minimizing direct data network costs, less structured
Given what it costs to live in London (Score:5, Insightful)
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They don't live in London. They pay (through the nose) for public transport season tickets to get to the office. However, that cost is dwarfed by a cut of £18k.
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Inertia keeps people in jobs, but a 20% pay cut is usually enough to get them polishing their CV. These days if you update your CV on LinkedIn or one of the job sites, within literally seconds your phone will start ringing with recruiters looking to temp you away.
My guess would be that in a year this company is understaffed.
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Win/Win for the Law Firm (Score:4, Insightful)
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I heard of a few countries where the rules say that for work from home, the employers have to pay an allowance for the expenses incurred at home.
I think Switzerland is one of those countries I have read about.
On a more related note, the travel time and cost savings (eating meals out when working in office) can be worth something to the employees.
I know of many people who will seriously consider work from home on a perm basis if there is a small paycut. I know someone who wakes up 15 minutes before the job s
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Yeah and I don't get that my work should have to pay for "expenses" incurred at home. They never paid for my travel into work and unless you live within walking/cycling distance of your place of work you are going to be saving more than the 2EUR per day that they pay in the Netherlands for example by not travelling into work. Noting that neither walking or cycling in are free either.
I personally choose to provide my own computer despite my employer offering to pay for one. The main reason being that it gets
Red Herring (Score:3)
Background (Score:2)
Note that is for new hires : one set of money for 100% WFH, another set for hybrid. Legal I am sure.
WFH though for Junior lawyers would be effective career suicide. Junior lawyers work shitty hours to climb the greasy pole to partner where the money is - never mind what the law is on working hours : you need to be known and seen to progress.
Billable hours are king.
685k / yr (Score:2)
"Partners will not be eligible, though." (Score:2)
So partners cannot work from home permanently. Does it mean they cannot cut anything from the 685,000 pound partner salary when the partner works from home?
20% is a big cut - this is an offer designed to be taken up by a trivial number of people.
Pathetic blackmail attempt (Score:1)
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Both sides give something and I can also expect things I need, instead of being "forced" to adopt inefficient hybrid, or stationary model. Just go to hell
hey, we'd all love a fulfilling career, but someone has to clean the toilets. strange how its never those people complaining
Inflation (Score:2)
Dumb move. They could have just waited a year for 20% inflation and then given CoL increases to commuters.
Instead they'll have to rehire for more than 20% over.
I wouldn't hire this lawfirm.
Cheap Assholes (Score:1)
This is such bullshit. The firm will save money by not needing to have as much space for staff, electricity consumption, less sick days, more productive staff, etc. Paying people less is just a shitty thing to do. The work the staff are doing is the same, the value they bring is the same, the firm is continuing to charge their clients the same (probably more), so why pay less money for the same work? I'd leave a company like that.
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so why pay less money for the same work?
because you dont spend it travelling to work, duh, it was part of the salary. i mean, less is being asked of you... so pay you more? a bit cheeky
Save the company money AND get punished for it (Score:2)
Nicely done Stephenson Harwood. And it's a good bet that if you take the pay cut and work from home ... that you'll be fired in pretty short order. Pretty much says it all about the company.
That seems totally fair (Score:1)
Absolutely fuck any company that thinks like this. They should take a 100% cut in clients after that kind of move.
This is just supply vs demand, no surprise really (Score:2)
Hybrid working ... (Score:2)
...I'll take the Hybrid working, I'll be in once a year and every other day working from home ...