legal sanity

In the last several years, I’ve logged a lot of online and offline hours learning, thinking and teaching about work-life synergy for lawyers (pdf). Although different issues converge under this umbrella, one topic that garners a lot of attention is flexible work options. It’s something I’ve addressed in posts on:

• Becoming more flexible

• Flexible work for lawyers 
  

• The flexible law firm: reality or pipe dream?

About a month ago, I came across a boston.com article on workplace trends for 2008. In it, columnist Maggie Jackson declares: “Fluidity is in. Piecemeal flexing is out.” She’s referring to a movement in corporate America to retrain the focus away from flexible work programs and towards the more fluid “Mass Career Customization" (MCC).

Championed by Cathleen Benko of Deloitte & Touche, MCC presumes that, today, more and more employees want to tailor their careers by “periodically adjusting their work pace, job setting and schedule, workload, and company role.”

After reading the article, I went over to Deloitte’s website and continued my MCC studies through a podcast that explores how MCC is not just a women’s initiative. Given the emergence of a dual-centric workforce, career customization serves the needs of men and women alike. I also vetted this series of in-house articles on Building a Lattice Organization. (The MCC model can be visualized as a career lattice - with numerous paths leading to different kinds of success – as opposed to a career ladder.)

In the wake of this education, I started considering the ways MCC might play out in the legal profession. Law firms aren't known for being early adopters of new workplace trends. That’s why it was so interesting to read a recent New York Times article – aptly titled Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms – that profiles a new proposal to bring customized career tracks to the law.

The proposal, called FACTS, is the brainchild of work-life consultant Deborah Epstein Henry. Henry doesn’t propose that firms do away with the billable hour. Rather, she suggests that they move from a liner to a more fluid billable hour model that recognizes how lawyers’ work-life needs may change at different stages of their careers. The acronym FACTS reflects the variety of work hour modes that Henry envisions:

• Fixed

• Annualized

• Core

• Targeted

• Shared

To learn more about the FACTS, you can read Henry’s article outlining her methodology (pdf). Those of you in the New York area can join in the conversation when Henry presents her program on Monday, March 3, 2008. To learn more about the program and register for it, visit Flex-Time Lawyers.