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Flexible working and sabbaticals among initiatives being introduced to bolster lawyer retention rates

Big law firms work hard to project the illusion that life within them is a utopian combination of riches, intellectual stimulation and perfect work-life balance.

What follows, of course, is a regime of dizzying hours, targets and hard, often extremely dry, graft – exactly the sort of life, ironically, that the renaissance men and women attracted to the have-it-all image sold by big law firms would have been keen to avoid at all costs.

The downside of this cunning, if somewhat dysfunctional, recruitment strategy is that it means corporate law firms are full of people who do not want to be there.

There are some signs that these moves have improved things. For example, two firms that have done more than most to facilitate work-life balance, Allen & Overy and Norton Rose, last week finished top of an employee satisfaction survey conducted by the industry magazine Legal Week.

Elizabeth Weir, a former City lawyer who is on LoD's books, works four to six months a year as a freelance lawyer in London, and travels for the rest of the time. "I reached 35, came to the conclusion I wanted to enjoy the next 35 years of my life, and haven't looked back," says Weir, who has just begun a 12-week job assisting one of LoD's corporate clients, having returned last week from several months in India and Bhutan.

The virtual law firm model closely resembles the self-employed structure of barristers' chambers – long the preserve of genuine renaissance types, such as the late Rumpole of the Bailey author John Mortimer. More recently, 3 Raymond buildings barrister Campaspe Lloyd-Jacob found the flexibility of the chambers approach allowed her to keep her job while writing her debut novel about women at the bar, ,written under the pseudonym Clare Jacobs. "The bar's tradition of flexibility, which has seen people like Ken Clarke use it as a launch pad into politics, continues," she says.

To an extent, the process is already under way, with LoD a separately branded spin-off of mid-tier corporate law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, and Freshfields drawing up an "alumni network" to call upon for freelance help when work levels are high. "Doubtless there will be a time again when demand for lawyers outstrips supply," says the firm's managing partner-elect, Mark Rawlinson. "And when it does, this way of working could interest many firms."

Alex Aldridge is a freelance journalist who writes about legal and educational