Although ‘the right to switch off’ didn’t make it into the Employment Rights Bill published earlier in October, the government said that it will consult on introducing the measure through a statutory code of practice alongside the bill’s passage.
That kind of approach, which would, at most, yield a higher payout for employees who take matters to tribunals, is unlikely to stop after-hours emails for lawyers anytime soon. But if there is a broader cultural and market-practice shift around work-life balance across the U.K. over time, there could be a shift for lawyers, too, according to Ben Smith, a senior associate at specialist employment law firm Littler.
“If our clients are ‘switching off,’ so to speak, that might allow more space for lawyers to do the same,” he said.
Littler’s Smith anticipates a single set of broad principles for all employers. That would allow companies to adapt these principles to their specific business and sector, similar to the way the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures or the recent guidelines on “fire and rehire” tactics work.
“Without that, I don’t think the ‘right’ to switch off is going to lead to much in the way of meaningful change for employers generally, and particularly not in the legal sector, where pressures on long hours and client service are particularly acute,” Smith said.
However, Smith argues that this is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future, especially given the expected minimal implementation of the “right” to disconnect.
Maya Beauville, associate at Littler in Paris, noted that because self-employed associates are independent, they already technically have a “right to disconnect.”
“In practice,” however, “many associates are afraid to turn down work from their partners in order to develop their own clientele,” she said.
Beauville said that she has yet to see a prospective client choose a firm based on its right to disconnect policy.
“The pressure from clients tends to be in the opposite direction, as they expect lawyers to respond quickly and be easily accessible,” she said.
Still, there are some signs of incipient changes with younger lawyers choosing in-house roles that typically do benefit from the right to disconnect at the same time that a tougher bar exam has left fewer people joining the field, Beauville said.
