Bloomberg Law reports…...Husch Blackwell has an answer, at least for some of its lawyers: Forget about it. The top 100 law firm this week launched a “virtual office” that includes 50 employees and nearly 40 lawyers who volunteered to give up their office space in exchange for permanent work-from-anywhere status.
Those lawyers’ compensation is unchanged, and they’ll retain full employment status. It’s just that they won’t have a dedicated, physical office. They’ll be able to move to cities where Husch Blackwell doesn’t have a lease, and the firm intends to hire lawyers in locations its people never lived before, J.Y. Miller, the managing partner of the virtual office branded “The Link,” said in an interview.
“We don’t see this as work-from-home. We see this as work-from-anywhere,” Miller said. “It’s very liberating. You don’t have to live near a physical office location or in a city where there is a physical office location. You have the freedom to live where you want to be.”
I’m more than four years into the remote lifestyle in Chicago, and I’m all for it. I know one New Yorker who left the city since the pandemic struck, and two Chicagoans who are preparing to move to Colorado. Their employers didn’t have much of an argument with the request considering they’d productively managed remote work for months.
That puts me in the 22% of Americans who recently told Pew Research they had moved or know someone who has moved since the onset of Covid-19. Young Americans, in particular, are more mobile—though in large part due to moving from college campuses or losing jobs.
Miller said a number of Husch Blackwell employees had reached out expressing interest in The Link and the freedom it could provide. He thinks it will be a “great recruiting tool for young people.”
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