Bird & Bird extends working from home to students

Bird & Bird is planning to significantly expand the range of its agile working policies by formalising mandatory remote days for its summer vacation scheme students.

The move is an indication of the extent to which the firm believes agile working is now a permanent part of business life.

It also indicates the belief among Bird & Bird’s leadership that a flexible approach to agile working will be a key requirement for future lawyers and a potential differentiating factor in the recruitment market.

From this summer, students on Bird & Bird’s vacation scheme will be asked to work at least one day a week from home as the firm looks to make elements of remote learning introduced during the pandemic permanent.

Over the past two years, every firm has been forced to implement remote working and several have run online vacation schemes, as pandemic restrictions have made coming into the office more difficult.

Bird & Bird’s move is thought to be among the first in which mandated remote working has been extended to students.

The firm is considering introducing a day’s working from home each week in its summer two-week vacation scheme. The plan will enable attendees to experience both in-person and virtual working and will recreate the working environment of the firm’s trainees, who are currently required to work up to 80 per cent of their time in the office.

The initiative would give the firm the chance to see how the students interact and perform in both a virtual and in-person environment and would also provide Bird & Bird with the opportunity to see how flexible and adaptable the candidates are.

Speaking to The Lawyer for February’s City Signal report, Bird & Bird’s early careers manager Lara Machnicki said the firm was planning to review all of its competencies this year but was looking to make the vac scheme change because the skillsets of what will be needed from lawyers will also have to change post the pandemic.

“Doing this will let us see from an early stage how they deal with working from home,” said Machnicki. “Bird & Bird can see that agile working is the way the industry is going and that if we don’t move with it, ultimately we’ll lose employees.”