Overwhelmed with personal tasks? Kirkland & Ellis provides a solution
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Kirkland & Ellis is providing concierge services to help lawyers and senior staff who are too busy to handle personal tasks and run errands.
The service, called Kirkland Concierge, includes a full-time, on-site concierge staff along with off-site concierge services that can be reached with a phone call or email, the American Lawyer reports. About 20 percent of eligible employees have used the service since it began operating this month.
People using the service don’t have to pay—unless an after-hours request requires a concierge staff member. Purchases made through the service, of course, aren’t free. Associates are more likely to use the service for help with personal errands, while partners are more likely to use it to book personal travel and entertainment.
Chiara Wrocinski, the firm’s senior director of legal recruiting and development, told the American Lawyer that the concierge idea came from her own frustrations last year when she was overwhelmed with holiday preparations. Wrocinski figured that lawyers are also pressed for time, “so why not solve that?” she said.
Kirkland & Ellis found that only 3 percent of companies provide concierge services. But the number jumps to 30 percent of employers that made lists of “best places to work.”
Wrocinski told the American Lawyer that the service isn’t there so people can work all the time. “It’s to provide a service that will supplement and enhance the lives of our attorneys and give them an opportunity to spend their very precious downtime on what they want to do,” she said.
