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Personally, I would disregard, do an exceptional job, and let them figure out what they value.
Yikes! Sounds awful for your overall mental health. I’m fully remote now and it’s the best thing ever. As long as I’m logged in and reachable during my work hours, getting the work done and meeting my expected billable hours, that’s all they care about.
That sounds like the perfect job! I notice you're in family law...I'm actually trying to get back into that type of law... any suggestions?
Just leave Holland & Knight
Mine is not. That sounds toxic.
Sounds like a prison environment
Tons of firms track, especially in Big Law, but the 9am cutoff is absurd.
9am is insane - what if you have coffee meetings with people in the morning
There probably won’t be any consequences if your hours are strong. It’s just corporate bs.
Chief
Badge in and go home
Unfortunate for the firm. If it hasn’t happened already they will loose some really good employees. With that being said, the choice is yours whether to stay or not.
Insane
As an aside, I basically see this as an acknowledgment by the company that no one notices or cares if you’re not there, so that they need to incorporate some formulaic process to keep track.
If employee presence were really critical, that would organically come out in performance reviews. But it’s not and it doesn’t, so we need to resort to checking boxes.
My last firm is an AM 20 firm. It cares about attendance more than work. I had to start working at 6 AM one time on a deal and couldn’t leave home for work because the closing was super intense. I emailed my manager and she said “you need to take PTO if you can’t show up on time.” I told her I’m not taking time off, I’m working on an urgent matter. She responded “that’s not something I can help with. You need to request PTO because if HR asks why you not at your desk at 9:45, I need to tell them something.”
Tell them this deal goes off the rails if I have to interrupt my WORK DAY for a fkng POLICY -- and cc the partner running the deal.
Unfortunately, once the badge swipe becomes the metric, the work itself becomes almost beside the point.
I would not assume they will be moved by high billables or midnight work. I’d treat this as a compliance issue in the short term and a culture issue in the long term: follow the written rule as much as possible, document errors, and quietly decide whether this is a place you want to keep investing in.
Don’t sweat it. It’s just something for HR to do to make HR look like it’s doing something valuable. But I do agree it’s overreaching and an attempt to micromanage.
At least you know. Our company waits until they want to get rid of someone and then they pull out the swipe stats and fire you.
That’s a modern day watchtower. What do partners say about it?
If you were doing what your firm wanted by going into the office three days a week, then it wouldn't bother you.
@VR1 100%
Sounds like a jail
No warning from my firm but they punish busy people by taking back their offices.
lol like Office Space. That is not a place I’d ever work. Childish behavior.
When I worked in Big Law in the 1990s, when presenteeism was a value, nobody tracked badge swipes - they actually looked for you in the office and if you told them why you weren’t in the office, and it was a legit reason, nobody bitched about it As long as you made your hours and didn’t screw up client work or relationships. Why the hell do they feel the need to do it now? Stupid.
I was in charge of physical security. This only came up when the system was being abused. IE General lack of attendance or tardiness to various meetings or calls, for staff a trend of bad timeclock punches (i.e. Use VPN to clock in from home and then commute to work). Unfortunately, when others abuse the systems in place the whole tends to suffer the consequences. I've found that over time policies go from one extreme to another before finding a happy place which is somewhere in the middle. I would talk to my supervisor and HR. Bring up your concerns. In all honesty they may say something that eliminates this stress from you.