Inside the new dealbreaker for lawyers: office days, not salary

Defined as workers having a say in where, when and how much they work, flexible working has rapidly established itself as a commonplace feature across the legal sector.

Indeed, the wide extent of its adoption is evidenced by the results of the Journal’s Employment & Salary Survey 2026, which has found that 85% of respondents report enjoying either ‘fully’ or ‘mostly’ flexible working options.

In fact, it is now ranking even higher in importance than the traditionally crucial size of paycheck for many lawyers when it comes to seeking out their next role. 

It is a trend seen by Liz Frost, founder and director of Edinburgh-based recruitment firm Frost Legal, who recounts how she was looking to fill a high-calibre, in-house vacancy.

It offered a salary at least £20,000 higher than equivalent roles, and swish offices with all mod cons. But staff being required to be onsite every day, a traditional requirement across the board just a few years ago, proved a major stumbling block.

“So many people said, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing five days a week in the office, I’ll only do four maximum’,” says Liz. “Candidates really like a bit of flexibility.”

The law sector has of course long been associated with being at the desk from dawn till dusk and beyond to tackle mountains of paperwork.

Going back more than a century, those tasked with printing session papers – key historic Scottish legal documents – could for several months a year “be raised all hours of the night, or, upon the other hand, after waiting on a whole day, work may come in the evening, which keeps them at labour perhaps the whole night, or at least, to a very early hour in the morning”.

But firms in Scotland hiring lawyers are laying out an increasingly flexible spread of work options as they seek to help their staff better synchronise their personal and professional lives.

That includes everything from going to a fitness class or doing the school run to having to take leave to care for dependents, and many are in the ‘sandwich generation’, caring for both young children and elderly relatives.

Brodies, for example, has in addition to flexible working options introduced policies such as emergency authorised absence and dependent leave days.

The most common set-up for lawyers is three days a week in the office (Tuesday to Thursday, generally speaking) and the rest at home.

And the Journal survey very much mirrors this, finding that the most frequent arrangement among respondents, at 25%, is their employer requiring them to be in the office at least three days a week. However, 24% reported no minimum requirement.

Aberdein Considine enables staff to work up to three days a week at home, depending on the requirements of each team.

And the Aberdeen-headquartered law firm has in fact gone to great lengths to come up with what it sees as the optimum flexible working strategy for its staff.

Such efforts have been spearheaded by Sally-Anne Anderson, who previously headed up the firm’s employment unit, and joined the management team in 2022.

She ignited the initiative known as People Matter which saw her pore over a whopping 3,000 comments from across the workforce – a diverse pool of nearly 500 staff in offices from Peterhead to Manchester.

“Our objective was to have a policy that had something for every single person in the firm, even if their role was one that required them to be in office for all of their working hours,” she says.

Initiatives to be rolled out on the back of this include introducing the firm’s AC Flex, offering hybrid working and flexible working hours, and Time For You, where people who have to work in the office can take back time for personal reasons. 

Sally-Anne says it has proved popular with staff, all while making sure the firm meets its targets, helped by the fact that solicitors are “accustomed to accounting for chargeable time”.

Flexible working is “quite simply an expectation now”, she says. “A lot of the work that we’re doing helps us in terms of attracting and retaining talented and dedicated colleagues, as well as helping us nurture their career progression through the firm. It’s therefore proving quite easy to make the links to how that actually helps our teams to perform better, to meet their targets and ultimately to feed into profitability.” The firm in the financial year 2024-25 saw a 41% increase in profit.

And there is much evidence that flexible working boosts output. Flexibility Works, a Scottish specialist in such working patterns, found in its 2026 Flex for Life report that 84% of the employers (from a range of sectors) polled said flexible working had increased productivity.

Flexibility Works has worked with several law firms, and its director and co‑founder, Lisa Gallagher, says the sector often comes with clear, fee-based targets. “You know what you have to do – so when, where and when you do that becomes less relevant.”

The consultancy and training firm has awarded its flexible working accreditation to Scullion Law, which has offices in Glasgow, Hamilton and Edinburgh and is run by MD Nicholas Scullion from his home in Madrid.

“I’m evangelical about flexible working,” he says. “The biggest benefit has been the increased happiness of our staff, and that in turn is helping us to be more profitable.”

Relevant actions by the firm include some of its criminal and family lawyers now working four-day weeks, after in-depth examination of how this could work.

And Lisa says it is a great example of a law firm operating a flexible culture “that’s working well for its business”.

Scullion was the first law firm to receive Flexibility Works accreditation, and Lisa aims to grow this list. 

She acknowledges that flexible working will not change the fact that the sector can entail long hours – but having room for manouevre is particularly beneficial to women who still shoulder most caring responsibilities.

That comes amid some discrepancies between the sexes when it comes to flexibility aligning with their lives, according to the Journal survey. Indeed, 56% of men cited flexibility meeting their needs, ahead of 49% of women.

Lisa cites a female lawyer she knows moving to a firm with the same business targets but much more flexibility, and being so much happier, while she knows of lawyers who have left the profession because they weren’t allowed to go down to four days a week. Part-time does not mean part-committed, she believes.

The flexible working expert adds: “I think [legal employees have] proved that they can work a little bit at home, they can adjust their hours a little bit, and the whole sector doesn’t fall apart. It’s using flexibility as a strategic business tool – and I really think it’s here to stay.”