John Morgan, the billionaire founder of Morgan & Morgan, one of the largest personal injury law firms in the United States, has sparked debate over employee privacy after revealing the controversial policies he placed on his work-from-home staff. During a recent appearance on The Iced Coffee Hour podcast, the 70-year-old attorney shared how he handled employees who resisted returning to the office following the pandemic, People magazine reported.
"You can work from home, but guess what? We're going to put a camera on your computer. We're going to put a camera up your a**," Morgan recalled telling his staff.
He said those lines towards the end of the episode when he said, "We're living in a world where there's a lot of people that just don't want to work."
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After that, he revealed that "nobody wanted to come back to the office", as he shared his experience of having employees who apparently refused to work in the office.
According to Morgan, the strict monitoring system, which reportedly tracks keystrokes and uses laptop webcams to periodically record screen time and activity, led to a wave of immediate resignations.
He claimed that 23 workers handed in their notice during the very first week the policy took effect. However, in a separate podcast interview in July, he previously put the number of early exits at 13.
Even after the resignations, he didn't realise the main problem was micromanagement, as he insisted it proved his suspicions about remote work habits.
"Oh my gosh. It's not that they don't want to work from home. They don't want to f**king work," he said.
"We're going to have a camera on you," Morgan said. "We're going to be monitoring you more closely than we would."
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Morgan and Morgan's founder, John Morgan, said he installs a camera on attorneys' laptops to monitor them, even at their homes, and also records their keystrokes. Is this the way forward for associates at law firms? I'm guessing he is considered an example of success in law, right?
by u/facemacintyre in LawFirm
Social media reactions
His blunt statements quickly spread across social media, drawing criticism with users arguing that such surveillance crosses ethical boundaries. "Why would you even want to do this? You can tell if associates are working based on their bills. It doesn't seem like partners would be incentivized to be suspicious of, or crack down on, inefficient over billing. If the associates aren't billing, then you don't need a camera to catch them, their timesheets will tell you. Associates likewise, are not incentivized to underbill or forget to report their time," one Reddit user said.
"I worked for a Plaintiffs PI firm that did the keystroke thing. They also had a bunch of KPIs that were supposed to be met. I left because it felt like micromanagement, when I am very good at my job. (It's not M&M, but a firm with similar structure.) The turnover and retention is awful," another user shared their story.
