Despite Recent Biglaw Efforts, Remote Work Seems Here To Stay
AffiniPay's 2025 Legal Industry Report shows flexibility isn't going anywhere. The post Despite Recent Biglaw Efforts, Remote Work Seems Here To Stay appeared first on Above the Law.
High profile back-to-the-office announcements from Biglaw heavy hitters have many wondering if the legal industry’s remote work flexibility era may soon come to an end. Law firms love matching policies with their peers and a mounting push against hybrid work could offer firms the safety in numbers they need to retreat from popular hybrid models.
But it seems the industry as a whole still relishes working from home too much to give up.
Based on a survey of over 2,800 professionals, Affinipay’s 2025 Legal Industry Report provides a wealth of knowledge about a wide array of issues. But with lawyers struggling to figure out how to run an office in a post-pandemic world, some of the most interesting results addressed the remote work landscape.
Overall, 28% of our survey respondents said their firms operate fully in-office; 21% use hybrid schedules for all team members; 19% are fully remote, and 18% adopt hybrid schedules for some of their staff. However, these preferences shift noticeably depending on firm size.
Less than a third have moved fully in office and while attorneys will quibble over 3 or 4 day schedules, it seems as though the 5-day office week still faces significant headwinds.
Unsurprisingly, solo practitioners show the most interest in working remotely, with 31% of those respondents operating entirely remotely. Once lawyers add more faces, the push for in-office work jumps up, with the 1-5 lawyer operation running fully in-office at 36% and only 10% working fully remote.
Hybrid schedules dominate at the large firms we surveyed (51+ lawyers), with 61% offering hybrid schedules for all team members—nearly three times the overall average. Fully remote and fully in-office arrangements were rare at this size, with only 6% reporting each model. These variations indicate that firm size influences not only logistical considerations but also cultural and operational needs when determining work arrangements.
While so much of the public conversation around returning to the office revolves around associate training — long the province of the bigger firms — when forced to explain themselves, training wasn’t the biggest concern.
Security and privacy lead the way. Which is a little confusing because technology exists to keep remote employees as secure out of the office as they would be within the four walls, and the dumbest activity — like feeding confidential material into ChatGPT — can happen wherever the lawyer finds themselves. And, not for nothing, but lawyers have worked hybrid for years. It’s not like they weren’t working from home on weekends and the data threat doesn’t go up just because they’ve logged on Tuesday instead of Saturday.
Which, of course, is why 72% of respondents are very or moderately concerned about tech failures.
It’s actually surprising how few respondents cited training and culture — though the high number of small and solo respondents might be a factor. The experienced lawyers who entered lockdown produced record-breaking revenue for firms, but can the new blood get up to speed without informal interactions with senior lawyers? Formal training programs can and must become a bigger part of training for a lot of reasons, not just because lawyers have fewer informal interactions, but as Stephen Embry noted at AffiniPay’s virtual seminar this week, to combat the industry’s historic biases that delivered so-called soft learning unevenly.
But formal training can’t account for everything. And even putting aside the unexpected learning moments, remote work throws obstacles in the way of minor feedback and course correction. Poking a head into an office to correct a small but stupid associate moment exacts a much smaller price than setting up a Zoom meeting to talk. If the mistake is small enough, the supervisor might just fix it themselves rather than deal with the hassle. Yet those tiny issues add up to create a festering hole in an attorney’s training.
That said, if junior lawyers are going to respond with “nah, you do that,” maybe it doesn’t matter.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post Despite Recent Biglaw Efforts, Remote Work Seems Here To Stay appeared first on Above the Law.
