Word limit: 1500 words, excluding footnotes and appendices (where applicable)
(-/+ 10% rule applies)
Style: Internal Memo Proposal (template attached), Arial, 12pt, 1.5 line spacing. Headings permitted.
Submission & marking: Via Blackboard Turnitin
The purpose of this case study exercise is to assess:
– Your understanding of legal services providers and the modern legal profession (e.g., regulation, standards, practice)
– Your understanding of how they operate as businesses and their priorities (commercial awareness)
– Your understanding of current issues facing the legal profession (for example, mental health and wellbeing, equality, diversity, and inclusion, and how the profession is changing generally in response to the consequent challenges and opportunities, e.g., regulation, ethics, legal technology
– Your ability to apply this knowledge to a fictitious scenario and evaluate/propose solutions (research, commercial awareness)
– Your ability to present your findings and proposals in a professional and convincing manner.
Titchfield and Little – Wellbeing Strategy – scenario
Titchfield and Little (T&L) is a major London law firm, with branches in several countries worldwide. It is a leading provider in many practice areas: banking, commercial litigation, intellectual property law, private equity, competition law and corporate/M&A.
The firm prides itself on its leading reputation for high standards and markets itself to potential trainees as a place where they will be working on high profile deals with leading legal experts in their field. Competition is fierce for training contracts at T&L, with thousands of applications every year, and trainees are expected to strive for excellence.
Its London office recruits 40 trainees per year, who are paid (in addition to their postgraduate training costs) a salary £50-55,000 p.a., and if retained by T&L, are paid £100,000 per year as newly qualified associate solicitors.
In addition to remuneration and other financial benefits e.g., pension scheme, employees of T&L are offered a range of employee benefits, such as generous annual leave, access to an onsite gym, in house cafés and restaurants, onsite dental and medical centre, private healthcare scheme, and access to an employee assistance programme to help with legal issues, counselling, and financial advice.
You have recently joined as a trainee solicitor at the firm. The induction process involves participation in meetings to include you in the development of T&L’s five-year wellbeing strategy and management challenges. As part of the firm’s new reverse mentoring programme, in which junior colleagues such as trainees are paired with senior lawyers and partners to develop trainees’/juniors’ coaching and leadership skills, you have been requested to imagine yourself in the place of your senior counterpart and consider a challenge facing the firm.
Challenge
Despite the many benefits offered to employees to ensure they are rewarded for their efforts, there are longstanding problems at T&L of junior lawyers having extended periods of sickness leave due to stress, anxiety and/or depression. Some of these lawyers have left the profession entirely due to complaints of ‘burnout’, despite the generous leave package, which lawyers are encouraged to take, and health benefits offered by the firm. A T&L workload survey conducted in 2019 revealed that 70% of junior solicitors responded that a major cause of stress and anxiety was the pressure to meet internal billable hour targets[1], where they had to account for activities in each working day. They also complained about the culture of ‘presenteeism’, which made them feel obliged to work long hours in the office at the expense of their health and private lives.
There has been a proposal to consider the idea of scrapping the system of tracking lawyers’ activities, in favour of allowing them to work flexibly. The impetus for change has increased with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to most employees working from home at least three days per week.
While T&L’s senior lawyers are in favour of the idea, some within management have raised concerns:
· Billable hours are a good way of measuring performance and encourage a culture of accountability
· Clients who are used to fees based on billable hours might object to being charged a fixed fee
· The billing team at T&L is geared towards a system of billable hours and is not currently equipped to shift to a system of fixed fee billing
Case study question
Based on your understanding of current issues facing the legal profession, write a memo using the template below, considering the following:
· The pros and cons of the proposal from the perspective of T&L and their employees
· Proposals you could make to facilitate a move towards fixed fee billing, should management decide in favour of a change
· Alternative proposals you think would enhance the mental health and wellbeing of T&L’s junior lawyers.
[1] https://www.thelawyer.com/what-are-billable-hours/
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