• Telework
• Law firm
• Seattle, Bellevue, Richland (WA); Anchorage; Boise; Portland; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Charlotte (NC); New York; Washington, D.C.; Honolulu; Shanghai.

Investment pays off
In 1990, Davis Wright Tremaine invested $4-5 million in telework. The 350-attorney law firm purchased an integrated system of technology and equipment making it possible to work from home or most anywhere at anytime.

The changing legal environment influenced the firm's decision: Top lawyers were moving to the Pacific Northwest for the quality of life and bringing their accounts with them. The firm needed to provide service as if clients were across town instead of across the country. At the same time, a hot employment market was raising the significance of employee satisfaction in a stressful industry. “There was a capital cost, but we believe it has paid back handsomely in terms of human resources and client service,” says Milt Stewart, a Portland transactions attorney and member of the law firm's executive team.

Law firm finds value in diversity
Telework fits with Davis Wright Tremaine's reputation as a large firm that does things a little differently. The organization has been a leader among Northwest firms in having multiple offices not only throughout the Northwest, but on the East Coast and in China. One partner has a practice in San Francisco but lives in Seattle. A group of health care lawyers choose to remain in North Carolina, but their practice is all over the United States. Many of the law firm's most productive and well-known partners, including department chairs, are part time, which surprises many people in the legal community. “I think we are ahead of the curve,” Stewart says. “It's not because we have unique generosity toward our people – it is a bottom line issue to keep the best lawyers and be the best service providers to our clients.”

Retaining the best
The law firm uses the opportunity to work from home part of the time as a way to give attorneys more control over a demanding workload, more flexibility, and a better balance between work and personal life. Managing Partner Brad Diggs views the ability to offer telework to lawyers and other staff members as a tremendous advantage in retaining the best people. “All we really have are our people,” Diggs says. “Our job is to make really talented people want to stay and build their careers at Davis Wright Tremaine.”

Telework tools meet business needs
The tools of telework for an attorney – laptop, pager, cellular phone, and fax modem – not only provide the freedom to work at home for a day or for focused periods, they also provide a higher level of productivity and accessibility to the mobile lawyer or paralegal. In fact, Stewart, who now works many Fridays from his beach vacation house, pioneered the use of a laptop, pager and cellular phone which the firm supplied when he was spending one week a month in New York providing general counsel to a client there, but needing to respond to other clients during that week.

Maintaining productive links
“We haven't tried to take a cookie cutter approach,” Stewart says. “The use of telework varies dramatically, but many of our lawyers and management staff work from home at one time or another – some with great regularity, others occasionally.” For some, telework makes it possible to stay more productive during different phases of life, including having or raising children, taking care of elderly parents, coping with an illness, entering retirement, or writing a book. For others, it makes it possible to spend time at a vacation house. However, for most, it is simply an effective and efficient way of working.

Managing partner uses telework to manage
Diggs spends a fair amount of time traveling between 13 offices to oversee the firm's most important financial, legal and human resource decisions. He works a full day at home at least once a month to catch up; and for a small portion of nearly every day, Diggs works from home or a hotel. “It's very seamless. Often neither employees nor clients know where I physically am, and it doesn't matter,” he says.

More work, less sacrifice
From his own experience and observations, Diggs says telework results in more work being accomplished. It can raise productivity levels by allowing staff more control over interruptions, eliminating or decreasing commute time, increasing job satisfaction, and providing the opportunity to focus on in-depth reading, writing and analysis. When more work is accomplished, it translates into more billable hours – a win/win for the firm and its employees. At one time, Stewart estimated he worked about four extra hours a week due to the ease and efficiency of working in his own home – or an additional 200 billable hours a year at $200 an hour. “It's like free inventory without the cost to the employee imposed by staying in the office late at night or all weekend,” he says.

“One thing I love is never ever having to go back to the office at night. I used to get home at 6:30 p.m., eat dinner, then go back to work. Now when I'm busy, I just work at home. My family and I really appreciate that,” Stewart says. “I just realized I went to the office last Saturday for the first time in a year.”

The law firm's culture accepts telework as a useful and positive tool. In fact, many of Davis Wright Tremaine's most successful lawyers are also the ones who use telework the most. “No one here has ever said I'm successful DESPITE the fact I telework,” Stewart says.

The paperless trend
A historic barrier to telework in the legal community is the sheer amount of paper and large law books. Laptops, internet resources and the ability to transfer documents back and forth between remote locations have been the key to making telework feasible. “Our industry is becoming much more paperless. Often documents are in the computer to begin with, and that's how they're transmitted,” Diggs says. Many lawyers find they no longer need more than occasional access to a traditional law library. Major reports of court decisions are available on-line through commercial services and increasingly from the courts themselves.

Beyond lawyers
Not just attorneys work at home. Paralegals, office managers, information systems staff, marketing managers, and accounting personnel use telework to meet project deadlines, to focus with fewer interruptions, and as a solution to work/life issues.

Financial Analyst Tracey Sundquist, a 16-year employee, has been working from home for nine years so she can spend more time with her children. At first she became a part-time employee, and later she returned to full-time. Sundquist works at the office on Wednesdays, giving her a chance to meet with accounting staff and collect reports. The rest of her week consists of odd hours – she works while her children are in school, in the evening and on the weekend.

Sundquist reports she is more efficient and effective at her job due to working at home. “My work is of higher quality, and I'm more productive – when I work, I work,” she explains. With two computers at home she literally is able to do two things at once, such as crunching budget numbers on one computer, while cranking out a monthly report on the other. The firm's budget for the last nine years has often been prepared at Sundquist's home at night while her children slept. During parts of the year, she is able to perform the work normally assigned to a person and a half because of her time flexibility and access to two computers. When her manager asks for a report, he usually gets it the next morning since Sundquist is a night owl. “When they need something quickly, they usually ask me.”

Approach legal issues with common sense
With partners who have expertise in employment law, one might expect Davis Wright Tremaine to have a detailed and formal telework policy. The firm simply says that employees who need or want to be able to work remotely will be provided with the capability if it makes good business sense. Bob Blackstone, an attorney who practices employment law, also consults with companies that are implementing telework programs. It is mostly a matter of determining how employment laws apply to teleworkers. Blackstone recommends policies that are more common sense than complicated. “The legal issues are not significant or daunting,” he says. “Depending on the application, it may be important to think through the selection, monitoring and review processes. Talk to other employers, and focus on telework results and output.”

© 1999 Washington State University Cooperative Extension Energy Program. This publication contains material written and produced for public distribution. You may reprint this written material, provided you do not use it to endorse a commercial product. Please reference by title and credit Washington State University Cooperative Extension Energy Program and Commuter Challenge. Published April 1999.