The 4-day work week: can it work for legal?

Tom Bangay
Hi, everyone, my name's Tom. I'm the director of community and content at Juro. If you have any questions throughout for our special guest, please put them in the chat. Or if you want to share any reactions to what we're talking about, please do.

Okay, so just to set the scene a bit, we had a hangout last week, which was an unrecorded off the record session where we talked about kind of burning issues for our members about burnout, because it's January and everyone's struggling. So it was a really great session and kind of sad, but also nice for us to share our experiences. And I think lawyers work really very, very hard as part of the DNA of being a lawyer. It's part of the reason why I decided not to be a lawyer, so I could avoid that.

But I think right from law school through training contracts into private practice, it's really ground into the DNA of lawyers that working super hard and as much as possible is kind of part of the role. And I think increasingly we're waking up to the fact that it doesn't have to be like that. So we wanted to share Emma's story today because burnout is just one reason why alternative working models are gaining ground, I guess, everywhere in high growth companies, but thankfully, and at last, in legal as well. So with all of that, Emma, could you maybe just give us a quick intro to who you are and what you do and where you work?

Emma Haywood
Yeah, of course. Thanks, Tom. I thought that was a really great intro to kind of set the scene to all of this, because we do have a lot of work to do in the legal profession when it comes to creating sustainable models of working. So I'm Emma Hayward and I'm Associate General Counsel for Commercial and Technology at Babylon Health. For those that don't know, Babylon is a digital healthcare company that operates in the US, the UK, Canada, Rwanda and Asia Pacific. I've been at Babylon since April 2021.

And before that, I spent eight years at Slaughter and May in their IP and tech team, latterly as a senior associate. I'm really, really passionate about the four-day week. Last time I worked a five-day week was September 2019 and since then I've really found that the four-day week has kind of revolutionized my thinking about my career, my thinking about lawyers and the value that we add. So I've been really excited to have this discussion today and to answer all of your burning questions.

Tom Bangay
Lovely, thank you very much Emma. 2019, what a glorious time that was. Pre -pandemic days. Obviously on days where we didn’t know about PPE and all that stuff. Wonderful. Okay, so Slaughter and May, Babylon Health, two easygoing, relaxed, low pressure environments where you can just breeze in at 11:30 and do a bit of work. I guess, like, with that context in mind, looking back to before you started doing this, how did you first hear about this as an idea, with just working four days in the week?

Emma Haywood
Yeah, so I was vaguely aware that there were some lawyers at Slaughter and May who at some point or another tried a four-day week. But to be honest, I had a really negative perception of it because pretty much everyone I’d spoken to had ended up feeling really, really shortchanged, working five, six, seven days a week, but being paid for four. And of course, the majority of those people were working mothers.

So I didn’t really have this kind of positive model. And I suppose when I decided to try it for myself, it was probably just a combination of being stubborn and being a bit of an optimist and thinking maybe there is a way to achieve this. So yeah, that was kind of where the idea popped into my head. But it was a bit later on really when my life circumstances changed that I decided to try it for myself. And that was when I was a senior associate with two young children. And I realized that what I really needed in my life was more time. And obviously it's pretty much impossible to create more time. And I wasn’t going to take the time away from my children.

And I really didn’t want to give up all of the other things in my life that, you know, bring me joy. So family, friends, hobbies, relationships, passions, having the time to kind of sit back and think about where I want my career to go. And so really the only thing left was to reduce my working hours. And I was aware that I was in an environment where that could be really, really tricky to do. So I guess the first step was to shift my mindset and think, okay, how am I going to go about this? It’s not just a case of taking a day out of my working week and then cracking on. I'm really going to have to think carefully about how to implement this. So it was a really thoughtful process from the start, which I’m sure we’ll come on to in some of the questions.

Switching to a 4-day work week

Tom Bangay
For sure. Yeah. Was there any kind of dramatic moment where you... you're realizing you threw your bundle of papers up in the air and you said you know what I'm never working a Friday ever again or is it a drip of pressure over time?

Emma Haywood
I think it was more of an over time decision for me really. So I was on maternity leave and I was thinking how is this going to be sustainable when I go back and I’d never been, you know, a senior associate and a mom to two young children before. So I didn’t actually really know what I needed. That’s the funny thing. I was just kind of following my intuition and trying to kind of logically work through it as any good lawyer would. And I just came to the conclusion that it had to be, you know, reduced working time. But no, there was no dramatic, I’m not doing this anymore moment. It was just a kind of considered decision, I like to think.

Tom Bangay
Very nice. Well, and also we’re going to get into some of the kind of techniques and structuring around all of this. But before I forget, we should plug Emma’s newsletter because there’s a wealth of resources about how this actually works in practice. You can think about it in your company and you can subscribe to it and we're going to attempt to pop it up on screen. Is it going to work? Teresa, what do you think? There we go. I would encourage everyone to click that link in the chat and open it in another window and do sign up for that newsletter as soon as we finish this session. Great.

So I guess once you get into your four day week, actually let’s flip that around. Let's talk about the business case. So at some point you have to go to someone and say, I know you like my work. Would you like me to do less of it? But probably you didn’t picture it that way, right? So how did you go about putting that business case together?

Emma Haywood
Yeah. So I’ve actually got some of my notes here with me from when I was sort of brainstorming for ideas about how to go about this at Slaughter and May. And of course that was in a private practice role, but I think the concepts themselves are really applicable to an in-house role as well. So the first thing on my list was what kind of four day week model am I actually asking for? Because you say the four day week and people think, hey, hey, long weekend. But actually there is a lot more nuance to it than that. And I’d say there are three models of the four day week that you might want to consider. Firstly, there’s the 80 % part time four day week. So that’s 80% of time, 80% pay, 80% output in theory.

4-day work week compensation models

Secondly, there’s the compressed model of the four day week. So you’re effectively cramming five days worth of hours into four and you’re committing to deliver 100 % of the output and therefore receiving 100% pay. And then there’s this more radical idea which some people may have seen in the news or on LinkedIn. And that’s the 180, 100 four day week. And what that effectively says is I commit to produce the same amount of output, so 100 % output in less time, 80 % time, because I'm producing that output, I should get 100% pay.

So you’re completely kind of divorcing the idea of the time it takes to reach the output from the output itself and just scaling the kind of level of output that you’re producing to your pay. And you need to really think about which one of those suits you and works for what you’re going for. In my case, because I wanted more time, it made sense for me to go to the 80% part -time model. And that was really helpful in terms of, you know, creating boundaries, which I know we're going to talk a lot about later. But effectively, my thinking was if I’m not getting paid for the time, then it’s going to be a bit easier for me to put those boundaries around my non-working day.

So set out the model and make sure that everyone is kind of on the same page on what you actually want to be doing and how it’s going to work. I would then say you’ve got to tackle the sorts of issues that your boss or your HR team are going to be concerned about. And I'd probably put those into three different buckets if you like. There’s the impact on your kind of client service or your business stakeholders. There’s the impact on your team and the wider business. And then there’s the impact on your own kind of professional development, if you like. And to give you some ideas for each of those categories, when it comes to thinking about how you’re going to deliver legal services to your clients or your stakeholders, whoever it may be.

You need to think about how you’re going to structure your working day, your working week, your systems, your processes so that you can deliver those services in less time and so that you do have a plan for those inevitable last minute issues or emergency situations. So you can think about delegation, you can think about software tools that you’re going to use, you can think about doing a kind of overall survey of the tasks that you do and thinking about which ones add value, which ones don’t and considering eliminating things.

So it’s that kind of ops piece, if you like, looking at how you actually deliver services. There’s also the question of comms and how you tell people that you work a four-day week. Are you going to have an out of office? Are you going to have a note at the bottom of your emails? You could put the text of that into your business case and really show that you’re thinking about how to let people know that you work a four-day week so that they’re aware. The next category I mentioned was the impact on your teammates and on the wider business. And I think the first thing I'll say is it's really important to recognise that the four day week isn’t just about swanning off on your non -working day and saying to your colleagues, see you later, you deal, I'm not working today.

It is a system, it’s a kind of operating system, if you like. And actually during my time at Slaughter and May, I agreed with the partners that I wouldn’t routinely have cover for my matters on my non-working day. Obviously if I was on holiday or something really desperately urgent came up, it was totally unforeseen and that’s different. But as a matter of routine, I wouldn’t have any covers. So that was something that was in my business case. And communicating that to your colleagues and helping people to understand what your arrangement means for them should also be part of the plan and something that you discuss with your boss. You could think creatively about this and come up with some positives and there are a lot for your teammates.

So in my case, I've been really able to kind of empower trainees and junior lawyers because they have the opportunity to take care of things when I’m not there. And it’s in a really supported way as well, because I’m saying, you know, this may happen tomorrow. If it does, then do this. Or, you know, if that document comes in, then these are the points that we want to be looking at. And it just gives them that chance to take steps to kind of develop professionally, knowing that I’m going to be back the next day. You could also, if you’re taking a pay cut, I guess, think about the impact on your team’s wider budget. Does that create opportunity to, you know, get a software tool that’s gonna save you a lot of time and help others in the team as well. So really think about the benefits too. And then the last bucket is this idea of your own professional development. Will working four days impact on the kind of quality of the work that you’re offered or the things that you work on?

And for that, I guess you could think about whether you need any training or mentoring to kind of upskill in more complex areas so that you can work more efficiently on those things and you don’t have to take the lower value contracts or lower value litigation matters, whatever it might be, just because you’re working four days a week. And the final thing I'll add on the business case is you need to show that there's some degree of flexibility. And ideally you want to set out in the business case what that flexibility might look like. So in my case, I check my emails on my non -working day at one o 'clock in the afternoon.

That’s what works for me. If you can put that in and you can say things like, you know, with X days of notice, I could swap my non -working day to a different day of the week, or, you know, I would be prepared to work a couple of hours on my non-working day if I can take the time back on another day. That kind of give and take flexibility, I think is quite helpful to set out because it gives people that orientation and they can figure out how it might actually work in practice. And also you want to do a trial period. I wouldn’t say go in with, you know, a full plan to permanently work a four day week, do it for a couple of months, three months, whatever it might be at first. And then you can have, you know, the evidence to show that you actually can make it work. And it’s much easier then to convince people that it should be a long -term plan.

Tom Bangay
Just on the, on kind of how it lands with the, with the business, I guess, I suppose it’s different, you know, a Slaughter May. There are lots of associates, although everyone’s specialized. Whereas in an in-house environment, there might be more of a expectation that like we really have a handful of lawyers. So it’s kind of a bigger deal for them to not be here. But then on the other hand, you know, we’ve got one lawyer, we’ve got a general counsel and he’s allowed to go on holiday, you know, so it’s possible for lawyers not to be there and the company can run. But did you find that it was, it was different when, when you were in -house as opposed to a Slaughter and May?

Emma Haywood
Yeah, to an extent, yes, because we run a lean team at Babylon and the business is changing all the time. And I’m the only lawyer in the business who specializes in commercial IP technology matters. So of course there are times when something will come in that only I could work on or that only I know where the documents are or whatever it might be. And so at first there was definitely an adjustment process, but I’d say it was no different to the adjustment process that all of us who’ve been private practice associates and have moved in -house have gone through. You need to just reconfigure the way you work and adjust how you advise as an in-house lawyer. So I kind of wrapped it all up in that process of making the transition anyway and actually didn’t feel too bad.

Tom Bangay
And did you like sense any, any pushback or reluctance from internal clients around the business?

Emma Haywood
Never. And that’s really interesting. So when I first started my four day week at Slaughter May, I found that people were just really curious about it and always wanted to know how it was working. But beyond that, you know, I never had any pushback from clients. I was always very open about it. And now, you know, I write a public newsletter about it. So everyone knows that I work a four day week. And at Babylon, people have been so accepting of it. And I think there are a few factors that really helped there. First of all, we're incredibly international. So we’re always working around time zones and different public holidays.

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