This is especially pertinent, he argued, when it comes to the increasingly mainstream trend of working from home.

“Unfettered” WFH policies, he suggested, can and do have “negative consequences”.

As the principal of a “small, kinetic commercial practice”, Mr Giribon told Lawyers Weekly that it is “not possible to cater for the requirements and intensive levels of service required by our clients if half or more of our staff is working from home, where necessarily their resources are reduced and their ability to respond to clients’ needs not just in a timely manner but often on the turn of a coin are impacted”.

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“Having an office that is half (or more) empty is not conducive to positive synergies between colleagues who cannot as easily bounce concepts and ideas amongst each other, further leading to levels of isolation between staff at home and staff at the office,” he said.

“There are also staff in our and other firms that have no choice other than to be at the office because of the nature of their work and a policy of remote working at will, creates an unfair, two-level workplace, where some staff members are perceived as being unequal or privileged to be allowed to work from home and others are not (this is certainly not exclusive to law firms).”

Impact upon society

The potential detrimental impact of long-term WFH arrangements, Mr Giribon continued, extends to societal consequences.

WFH poses, he said, a “severe threat” in the ability of CBD-based retailers to operate their businesses profitably, especially food retailers and other businesses that live or die based on city-based traffic, he said.

This, he said, leads to defaults in leases, bankruptcies, “and a decay of the CBD which is now very evident throughout the country”.

“Commercial building owners are receiving less rent and commercial vacancy rates still hover around 13 per cent (likely only because commercial tenants are hoping that WFH trends are reversed and they won’t have to downsize offices, which they no doubt will if this trend were to become permanent),” he outlined.

“Governments spend billions upon billions of dollars to provide road and transport infrastructure to move workers from their homes to their workplaces. If the WFH trend increases, the consequence is that the infrastructure building sector declines, leading to fewer projects, job losses and stagnant economic growth.”

Dangers to firms

Perhaps most importantly from the perspective of legal businesses, Mr Giribon noted, “when enterprises determine that a substantial portion of their workers will want to work from home permanently, then, to reduce costs, it will be much more effective to outsource many positions, especially clerical and secretarial to lower-cost options, including overseas outsourcing”.

“The consequence of this, of course, will impact lower-paid workers in clerical jobs who are often filled with younger or less skilled workers who will then further contribute to unemployment or underemployment,” he said.

Moreover, he added, “there [is] increasing evidence to show that working from home has a negative mental health effect on those workers and does not in fact lead to better work/life balance as there is no demarcation between office life and home life, with a decrease in socialisation and the ability to decompress away from the work desk, further impacting on mental health and isolation issues”.

How Mr Giribon’s firm has operated

Calvados + Woolf, Mr Giribon detailed, made the decision soon after the onset of COVID-19 – and after a “brief” trial of remote working – that all staff should work from the office, unless they were unwell.

“In any case, given that at the time especially, all shops and other social activities were closed or non-existent, it would have been pointless working remotely as all our staff merely travelled to and from work without any stops in between and therefore mitigated their chances of infections – the fact that our state government deemed law firms as an essential service assisted us in this decision as it removed the obligation to allow staff to work from home,” he explained.

“We found that operating a small practice remotely was in fact less efficient, more stressful in terms of timelines and resources and reduced unacceptably the service levels our clients expected.”

There were, of course, other measures put in place in response to the global pandemic, including the suspension of aged debtors’ collections. But otherwise, Mr Giribon said, the firm continued to progress matters as per normal so as to ensure clients were not disadvantaged and did not feel under pressure in terms of having to settle invoices within the usual seven days.

“We are now back to pre-COVID levels of both activity and financial practices and in our experience, our clients have appreciated the flexibility we allowed and the levels of service we continued to provide,” he said.

Reflections

Ultimately, Mr Giribon submitted, firm leaders “must, in fact, lead”.

“Sometimes, that entails telling staff hard truths and making unpalatable and ‘unfashionable’ decisions to ensure that the continuity of client service is maintained and ultimately firm’s jobs are safeguarded,” he argued.

This is something, he suggested, that practitioner advocates and legal member associates “ought to be vocal about”.

When asked why he is a better lawyer because of in-office arrangements, Mr Giribon said: “Law firms are social places where the work is complex, cerebral, and often stressful and therefore benefits from formal and informal collaboration between colleagues.

“I enjoy (and I believe my staff and colleagues enjoy) having a busy, bustling office where ideas are shared, and the work produced is often the result of multiple points of view and strategic thinking.”