Biglaw

The Best (And Most Unexpected) Pandemic Perk Yet: Naptime

Will your law firm let you take a break to nap during working hours?

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For more than 18 months, lawyers and legal professionals have been going into overdrive while working from home, pushing law firm revenue sky high . There can be no more work-life balance when work has invaded your home; work simply is life. When working from before the sun rises to well after the sun has set, can anyone really fault an exhausted attorney for taking a short afternoon snooze?

With a new focus on wellness throughout the pandemic, napping may become part of law firm culture, whether some like it or not.

Law.com has zeroed in on the trend, and at least one managing partner has taken advantage of this unexpected pandemic perk:

Matt Haverstick, managing partner for litigation at Philadelphia midsize firm Kleinbard, naps everyday.

“One aftereffect of Covid is that it laid bare that our work, especially at a high level, transcends normal work hours. And when we had the chance to be at home for so long, it made it easier for our work lives to accommodate this truth,” he said in an email. “For instance, a lot of mornings I’m up at 4 working, which was even easier to do during Covid. I am much more productive in the afternoon and evening if I’ve given myself a break in the middle of the day.”

Other partners, however, seem a little wary of the midday nap:

[S]ome lawyers who enjoy a siesta find that it doesn’t fit into their workday. K&L Gates partner David Fine, who has been back in his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, office since March, fits naps into his weekend routine. But he avoided them in the year that he was working remotely, fearing that he’d be unproductive after waking.

“They’re just too disruptive,” he said, while acknowledging that earlier in his career, he’d joked with colleagues about the virtue of regularizing a postlunch nap in the office.

Biglaw firms, on the other hands, seem to have bought into the necessity of naps. Akin Gump, for example, offers meditation rooms in some of its offices, complete with lounge furniture or floor mats, while Morrison & Foerster has wellness rooms in each of its U.S. offices. According to Marie Armstrong-Hebert, the firm’s director of public relations, “They are designed to allow employees to recharge—including by napping—in a private and welcoming area.” (One former MoFo associate admitted that these rooms were most often used for the the “I’ve been here for days and hours without sleep and will collapse scenario,” which just goes to show how truly important sleep is for those in the legal profession.)

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For our money, it seems like Haverstick is on point. “Forward-thinking employers should be encouraging midday check-out sessions,” he said. If you want your lawyers and staff to bring their best, perhaps it’s time to encourage more sleep — even if that means napping during working hours.

Does a Law Firm’s New Normal Have Room for an Afternoon Nap? [Law.com]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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