Agile working

"In my previous firm, it was "you're in the office unless there is a good reason", I like that it's different here."

"Being agile is key to meeting both the needs of our people and our clients. Collaboration, both between colleagues and with clients, continues to be an important bedrock of our business. We know that clients will continue to value face-to-face interaction with our lawyers, and our offices will continue to be collaboration hubs. We are also committed to finding new ways of working which continue to reduce our impact on the environment, through greater use of technology to conduct business, combined with being more intentional about decisions on business travel in the future."

Tim Richards, Managing Partner at Michelmores

We believe our people work at their best when given choice about where and how they work. Our philosophy on agile working is based on finding the best mix to meet the needs of our clients, to collaborate and connect with each other, and to balance individual needs.

Where our people choose to conduct their work is activity-led, with a balance between time spent remote working, and time in the office available for most roles.

Agile working in practice

We have created a set of Guiding Principles which are the “guide rails” that inform our approach to agile working across the Firm. Each team collaboratively designs its own approach using the Guiding Principles as a reference point. This means that teams can adapt to ensure their approach is relevant for what is going on in that week or month.

Our approach is based on the assumption that here there is no “one size fits all”.

Our people have spoken

In a recent Firmwide survey, 90% of our people were positive about the direction of travel on agile working, with 92% saying an agile approach is important to them in the future. We recognise that the approach we’ve taken enables a wider variety of people to find, keep and progress in a meaningful role at our Firm. We also recognise that there are clear environmental benefits too.

We remain committed to agile working and are constantly looking to improve how we work together.

In addition to agile working we offer flexible working arrangements, both formal and informal.