Starting this month, the firm's offices are prepared to accommodate more people than they have been. Casey Ryan, Reed Smith's global head of legal personnel, noted that there have already been some people going back into the office at each location, and leadership has been "gleaning from their experiences" in order to develop its reopening plans.

The "Welcome Back Wednesday" program, launching in June in the U.S., will encourage people to sign up for one day of work in the office on a Wednesday that month. The firm will provide them with boxed lunches and arrange social gatherings "for personnel to safely reconnect." Those Wednesdays will also include tech and office support so people can get their individual offices back up and running.

And after that, "The idea is that in July and August we'll use those as a soft opening for personnel to come back into the office," Ryan said, continuing to use a reservation system.

"The move to flexible work represents a step forward in transforming our business based on the new understanding we have gained from our remote work experience during the pandemic," Sandy Thomas, Reed Smith's global managing partner, said in a statement. "We have learned that we can serve our clients at the highest level in a work environment that includes flexibility and that this arrangement offers significant benefits to our people as well."

The flexible work policy does not require a minimum number of days in the office, the firm said, but lawyers are "expected to maintain some routine physical presence in the office, including for client and team meetings, office events, training sessions and practice group meetings."

"Communication is going to be essential—lawyers communicating with each other and their teams about times when they'll need to be in the office," Ryan said, but she emphasized that there is no set time requirement for in-office work. Lawyers' needs in that respect are "highly individualized," she said.

Staff will be organized into three categories: office-based, hybrid and fully flexible. The first group is expected to be in the office full-time, hybrid roles require routine office presence but allow some flexibility, and the latter group allows for full-time remote work. The majority of staff roles will be hybrid, the firm said.

Outside the U.S., Ryan said, offices are reopening as allowed by local restrictions, and reservation systems are being used to track capacity. Ryan said the new flexible work policy is global.

In its announcement, Reed Smith also noted that its summer associate program, beginning in May, will start remote but will include some voluntary in-office activities in June and July.

Ryan said the plan was discussed on a call Thursday with lawyers and staff, and it has been received well so far.

"We tried to harness the best parts of the remote working experience and blend them with the best parts of the in-office work experience," Ryan said. In the past year, "law firms and lawyers learned a lot about themselves. They learned that they can be highly productive in remote work and learned more ways to collaborate and connect that were effective."

Other than encouraging vaccinations the firm continues to have other safety measures in place, including staggered schedules, revised floor plans, social distancing, mask requirements in shared spaces and daily cleaning. The firm continues to use a reservation system to control capacity as well.

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