I know some tryhard is going to complain about Biglaw going soft, but this is a distinctly good thing. Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner global senior partner, Segun Osuntokun, told The Telegraph he advises attorneys to avoid sending emails over the weekend. In fact, when he does work on a weekend, he schedules any non-urgent emails to arrive on Monday, not over the weekend.
Osuntokun said, “I know that if I send an email to a team member on a weekend and I’m not expecting them to do anything about it, they won’t know that.” He continued, “I know that their weekend is going to be impacted severely.”
What a refreshing burst of humanity from Biglaw!
As reported by Legal Cheek, Osuntokun made the necessary caveats for when there’s deadlines involved.
According to the report, weekend emails are acceptable if colleagues have agreed to communicate, such as when preparing for a court hearing or meeting deadlines for time-sensitive deals.
“We talk a lot about how we treat our colleagues as we would our best clients and inherent in that is that you treat people with respect,” Osuntokun added.
Not to tell tales, but I can distinctly recall an era when attorneys would use the schedule email function to compose a Friday email that would go out on Saturday to make it look like they were working over the weekend. How nice that a Biglaw firm is making it clear those sort of machinations are unnecessary.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].