Avoid sending weekend emails, top lawyers told

Segun Osuntokun
Segun Osuntokun, a global senior partner at City law firm BCLP, encourages email scheduling to avoid disturbing staff out of hours - Christopher Pledger for the Telegraph

A City law firm boss has urged partners to avoid sending non-urgent emails on the weekend amid concerns that junior lawyers are working too much.

Segun Osuntokun, global senior partner at City law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP), said that he scheduled emails to avoid disturbing staff out of hours.

It comes amid a debate over the culture in the legal industry – where junior staff often work nights and weekends – after the death of a partner at another firm following an “acute mental health crisis”.

Mr 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. I know that their weekend is going to be impacted severely.”

When working during the weekend, Mr Osuntokun said that he almost always delayed the delivery of emails which do not require a response until Monday.

The Nigerian-born lawyer makes an exception in cases where colleagues have agreed to communicate during the weekend, for example, in preparation for a court hearing or meeting filing deadlines for time-sensitive deals.

Mr Osuntokun’s “pretty reasonable” approach is not a firm-wide policy but rather something many partners have agreed to follow.

He said: “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.”

Mr Osuntokun, previously BCLP’s UK managing partner, stressed the importance of considering the welfare of colleagues especially as ongoing pay war for City lawyers risks junior talent feeling pressured to overwork. Some firms offer a starting salary of as much as £180,000.

The death of Pinsent Masons partner Vanessa Ford last year also triggered a period of soul searching within the wider industry.

Ms Ford had been working 18-hour days before being struck by a train. At her inquest, a coroner found that she had “consumed a significant amount of alcohol while undergoing an acute mental health crisis”.

Mr Osuntokun said: “Every major law firm is in the business of making a profit.

“But for me, it’s just as much about how you make that profit as about as much profit as you make.”

It comes as Labour plans to give workers the right to switch off, enshrining their ability to ignore emails and calls outside their working hours. The policy is part of a sweeping overhaul of workers’ rights championed by Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister.

British businesses that repeatedly contact staff out of hours could be taken to an employment tribunal and face thousands of pounds in fines.

Mr Osuntokun declined to comment on the plans until further details are released.

BCLP, formed from the 2018 merger of Missouri’s Bryan Cave and London’s Berwin Leighton Paisner, employs nearly 1,300 lawyers across 31 offices worldwide.

The law firm pays newly qualified solicitors £105,000 each and awards bonuses only after UK lawyers bill at least 1,700 hours per year.

BCLP is preparing to introduce a new management system across its offices globally which will result in fairer work allocation among lawyers and offer greater wellbeing support for staff.

The move also addresses so-called affinity bias, where managers unconsciously distribute work to employees with similar backgrounds and interests at a disadvantage to those who don’t.

Mr Osuntokun, who is black, believes the new system can address the profession’s racial diversity problem by removing barriers for ethnic minority lawyers hoping to progress to partnership.