Cleary Gottlieb staff not allowed 'out of office'

UK law firm Cleary Gottlieb has told its London lawyers than an “out of office” email response to a client is unacceptable. 

In an email to London-based lawyers, partner Raj Panasar essentially said lawyers should be able to get to emails even when they are out of the office, or at least get a colleague to deal with them. 

Failing that, on the rare occasion that a lawyers is on a long flight, the secretaries are unable to get to them, and the lawyer is in a very different time zone, then lawyers may have an excuse to delay getting to emails. 

In that case, they were told, a revised email template for “out of office” should specify time zones, give numbers to reception and secretaries, and promise to deal with the email shortly. 

As RollOnFriday notes, the old fashioned notion of a lawyer being on holiday doesn’t get a look in.