Monica Burch and Jane Hollinshead are a rare breed: senior partners at a big City law firm. On top of that, they both work flexibly, fitting busy practices into hours to suit them and their families.

At Addleshaw Goddard, a pioneer of flexible working, such arrangements are not unusual. But throughout corporate law firms, flexible or “smarter” working — if on the rise — is not very visible and the macho long-hours “jacket-on-the-back-of-the-chair” culture of “presentee-ism” prevails.

This week a report, Legal Lives, was published after research by the charity, Working Families, on the barriers in law firms to a better work-life balance.

Initiated by Burch and Hollinshead and sponsored by Addleshaws, it involved 13 corporate firms, some outside London, and recommends that the prevailing culture must end if the best talent is to be retained.

Burch, 42, a commercial litigation partner and on her firm’s board, has three children under 12 (she had two as an associate and one after she became an equity partner in 1999).

She has seen a big change since joining the profession 20 years ago. Addleshaws can now boast that women make up 22 per cent of partners, 25 per cent of legal directors

(an alternative to partnership introduced five years ago), 34 per cent of managing associates, more than half of other associates and 63 per cent of trainees.

“I work the equivalent of a nine-day fortnight but I save the tenth and take it as holiday over Easter, in summer and Christmas,” she says. “I started working flexibly after my third child, but I wish I’d done it years ago.”

About 9 per cent of Addleshaws’ 175 partners work flexibly, including six men. It is the norm for people to hotdesk or work from home — the firm has experienced a 300 per cent rise in its spend on laptops and BlackBerrys in the past year. Retention after maternity leave is high too — 95 per cent return, compared with 40 per cent nationally. Seventy per cent then work flexibly.

The firm is unusual. “So many others have these beautifully written HR policies,” Burch says, “but what happens in practice does not seem to line up with them.”

Hollinshead, 40, has been a partner since 2001 in the commercial real estate group and is on its executive committee. She has two children, aged 10 and 8, and moved recently from a three to a four-day week, one of which she tries to work from home.

“There’s a cultural mindset within the private practice legal sector that does not encourage such arrangements to be seen. They are under the radar. Plenty of people are working flexibly but there’s a lack of role models. There’s a desire for secrecy.”

The report identifies many factors why this should be so: a misconception that flexible working means fewer hours, lack of commitment, clients wanting a lawyer on call 24/7, and that it is all to do with women and childcare (what about care for elderly parents or flexible hours for men?).

Paul Lee, senior partner of Addleshaws, said: “People might just want a day off to do something completely different, which makes them a more rounded person. It can be as simple as that. Firms need to embrace flexible working; the next generation will demand it. And they are the bedrock.”

There are other barriers, including the City work ethic of long hours and the belief that being at a desk, even if surfing the net, is working harder than working from home. Above all, there is the way that lawyers charge their time; their billable-hours targets.

Burch and Hollinshead want a radical shift, so that output, not input — the present trigger for bonuses — is the test. Time management is crucial but can be done with some effort and foresight. Clients also need to accept realistic deadlines. But, they say, most are happy with flexible working and are in companies that embrace it.

Finally, they want partners’ “fiefdoms” and their domination of working patterns on a given job to end. Instead, there must be more team-working, delegation and trust.

Some work is harder to manage than others. As Burch says: “If I have an injunction, I drop everything and do it.” But much is predictable and doesn’t need a lawyer on the phone or in court. Instead, it can be done working on a laptop.

Hollinshead says that all the client cares about is a “first-class service, not where the lawyer does her work”.

The pair believe that flexible working is at the top of the agenda but that the economic crisis could force everyone back to their desks. The climate could work the other way, however. One investment firm has just offered all staff “smarter working”.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the Attorney-General, put it in a nutshell as she launched the research, citing the Crown Prosecution Service, where flexible working is common. It is not a soft option, she said, it is “hard edged”. The younger generation want it and clients are happy with it. “If you want the best people to hang on, then get managers to think about what makes their lives more liveable. If you have that, you get a higher quality of work.”

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