The traditional big law model is dead, according to Bryce Arrowood, who co-founded a law firm called Clearspire trying to buck the old-school tradition. The District-based company allows its legal staff to work primarily from home, an approach Arrowood says means happier, more effective lawyers with normal lives. How does your firm work without a traditional office?
It’s kind of what I’d call a hub and spoke system. We don’t have everyone working exclusively from their home, but we realized that in a knowledge-based economy … you don’t need to be working in a brick-and-mortar structure day in and day out. There are times when you need to work with your co-workers and meet your clients face to face, so we do have offices in metropolitan markets, but most of the time our attorneys are working in home offices.
What’s the benefit?
The main complaint for a lot of lawyers that work in big law is that they are expected to bill a certain number of hours every month. Our model says we’re liberating you to practice law … we don’t have any quotas for how many hours you work. And by having a more flexible model that doesn’t put these mandates on our employees, they’re happier. And we figure if you’re happier, you’re probably going to be more productive and again drive more value to the client and yourself.
So it’s not your 9-to-5 job?
“You’re not constantly having people knocking on your door, you’re not constantly looking for ways to keep yourself busy when you don’t have a project to work on. If you want to go run an errand or pick up your child at school and spend 40 minutes with him or her, you can do that.”
Do you practice what you preach?
I do, and it’s been a very liberating thing for me. Most people have commented that they feel like they’re more efficient, they’re happier and they get more done, they’re more productive when working from their home office. – Ben Giles
