Lawyers + 2012 Olympics = Disaster

Or so the senior partner would have you believe. What a killjoy. Bast*rd.

City firms have already begun putting action plans in place to deal with the disruption caused by the London 2012 Olympics, the Gazette has learned.

London 2012 organisers have written to all firms in the capital warning that capacity on rail and underground services will be stretched unless they take action, with passengers facing delays of up to an hour just to use certain key stations.

You WHAT? “Will be stretched”? You’re kidding me. It’s stretched now; during the Olympics it’s safe to say that London’s transport infrastructure will simply buckle in two and implode.

“Delays of up to an hour”. Christ – sounds like their aiming for an improvement then. Don’t believe a bit of it.

Law firms including Linklaters, Simmons & Simmons and Hogan Lovells are putting together action plans more than a year before the Olympics begin on 27 July, including working from home and staggered start and finish times.

Yes, because those memos saying, “don’t come into the office but work from home on these dates” take such a long time to draft.

I rather fancy lawyers are going to get a taste for the working-from-home lark. Everyone moans that it blurs the boundary between home life and work (hmmph, home life – whatever that is?) and it gets them into bad practices, not going into the office means they can’t escape the drudgery of married life for that blissful 8-9 hours a day yadda yadda yadda. I don’t know: I find that I’m strangely productive on the odd occasion I work from home.

One partner at another major City firm told the Gazette that it was expecting productivity to be half that of a normal month, due to transport problems, staff absence and the annual August slowdown.

‘You’re going to have to expect a major hit for the length of the Olympics and Paralympics,’ he said.

‘All firms are having to integrate it into their financial planning as you’ll be looking just to cover your costs during August.’

Oh gawd. Talk about talking the sparkle off it already. Perhaps all lawyers should just stay at home and sulk for the duration of the Olympics.

Ooh – which reminds me. I’m one of the lucky ones who has tickets!