The Benefit Of Working From Home

I work from home. I have full time since about 1999. I was a spare room tycoon before it was cool. I did the carpet commute before people admitted openly that they operated their business this way.

I speak to a lot of lawyers about the prospect of doing the same, and I am usually amazed by those, even if they are intrigued by the idea, who cannot let themselves do it. The resistance centers on a number of things, but mainly it is old "bad for business" excuse.

This attitude probably demonstrates that law schools really do not teach lawyers about business, or how to analyze business opportunities. New lawyers tend to operate on their business prejudices, impressions of what a lawyers looks and acts like, and anecdotal examples.

It is hard to understand why lawyers do not see the benefits of working from home, when the government, in-house law firms, and big business do.

Congress passed a bill requiring every agency to establish a policy under which employees will be authorized to work from home (which they still refer to as "telework") to the "maximum extent possible".

And, a new study from the Telework Research Network outlines the benefits to small and medium-sized businesses in letting their workers work from home.

Here are some highlights of the study. Employees allowed to work from home just half the time saves the company $11,000.00 per year per employee.  Also, productivity is up 27% for those employees on those work at home days.

The savings, from my experience, are substantially more for attorneys and law firms. They are even more substantial if the practice is based from home. The difference is that in business, working from home saves the company or employer money and increases its profits through productivity.  In the small firm or private practice of law it saves the lawyer money. More importantly, it allows the lawyer to survive and prosper in what can otherwise be a competitive market.

Comments

[Krmarko]

My next door neighbor runs his law practice out of his house and seems to be doing quite well (if that Mercedes S550 in his garage is any indication). I'm not sure what he'd do without cell phones and bluetooth since every time I see him, he's wandering around the yard talking! I'm an IT journalist who works from home, so I can certainly relate to the advantages.

[Eric L. Mayer]

In planning for my practice, a lot of people questioned my plan. I got a lot of "You're going to work where?" and "Are you sure you want to do that?" I'm sure such interrogation might cause someone to rethink their motives and plan. Now, I do work from my home, but not exclusively. I also work at clients' homes, parks, coffee shops, and just about anywhere else. Someone once asked me where my office is. My response: "Yes."

For me, it was key to test my plan in a number of different ways. I did this while on active duty in the Army Trial Defense Service. First, I committed to a near paperless office. I say near paperless because I always needed to keep a couple of things at arms reach. However, those things never exceeded a 1'' binder. Everything else was scanned. Some of my software actually allowed me to create searchable PDFs (which paid-off tenfold in the courtroom). In the end, I discovered that a well-planned paperless office is actually more efficient and convenient than a papered office. The hard part is the setup phase. Like growing a beard, you must persevere through the itchy stage.

The next thing I did was give my plan a test-run. Now, it was necessary to do this while still providing my clients with my A game. Therefore, I put a lot of planning into this process, and it worked great. I took a couple of cases at a military installation that was 6 hours away from mine. I forced myself to operate with the assumption that I would be without printing, reproduction, and network access when at those cases, and I structured my planning around these assumptions. If you correctly frame your circumstances before execution, you'll do fine. A test-drive like this is critical because it gives you confidence in your plan while minimizing risk.

In the end, it worked like a charm. It felt wonderful to sit at a picnic table at a park in 70-degree, clear, sunny weather briefing my client and his family on our plan for trial using my laptop. It was liberating, comfortable, and, in my opinion, the way representation is supposed to be. They were thrilled, and that's what matters to me.

Eric Mayer
http://emayerlaw.com

[Davida]

Enjoyable read! I've been working from home since I had my daughter nearly three years ago. My law practice has not suffered at all. Since most of my clients come from networking/word-of-mouth, they already know me or know of someone who knows me. They know I handle their cases efficiently and they like the more relaxed, personal attention. My husband, who works full-time outside the home, does so that we can have medical insurance and steady income during the slower times. Since he's an attorney as well, we work together on larger cases and share networking efforts. Now that we just had another child two months ago, we have even more incentive to make our work-from-home practice successful. This is the absolute BEST way for me to balance having a family with my career. I can spend quality time with them without being overly stressed AND I can still put my qualifications to good use. Now I have to go so I can finish cooking dinner...