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Flexible working requires you to understand and anticipate your client’s demands so they don’t feel the need to call you out of hours, whatever they may be, and the management of files so that questions that have to be answered when you are not there can be. That’s not rocket science.
It exposes your staff and colleagues to your clients; if you don’t have confidence in them you shouldn’t be employing them.
It exposes your clients to other staff and colleagues; that should be a good thing for engaging with them and developing their confidence to send you other work.
It’s possible to manage clients differentially – don’t give everyone your mobile number.
Law does contain dinosaurs, especially in the City. I’m based in the West Country – the Law Society came down a while ago to tell us about all the ground-breaking flexible working initiatives being undertaken by magic circle firms. After a while there were murmurings and then the audience started pointing out that we’d been operating these kinds of working practices for years. The reaction of one of the speakers was to say “Aren’t you advanced down here!” We were so surprised the straws nearly fell out of our mouths into our cider glasses.