At many large firms, lawyers often bill 40 or 50 hours a week even if they are actually working 60 to 70. “There’s been a huge market failure for 20 years, where the market is not delivering to lawyers the schedules they want,” says Williams. Unlike Big Law firms, the New Model firms highlighted in the report “hard-bake into their business models flexibility and shorter hours for everyone.”

These firms employ two main types of schedules to bring professional time and leisure time back into balance. The first is what Williams calls “full-time flex,” a 40- to 50-hour workweek that can be tailored around family and other obligations. This arrangement means actually working 40 to 50 hours per week, not just billing those hours and working several more. The second type of schedule is a short, part-time arrangement (as few as 10 per week) for attorneys who want to put law on the backburner, sometimes temporarily. These lawyers tend to be “the moms and the jazz musicians,” says Williams.

Many New Model companies are not law firms, but matchmakers—they pair lawyers with clients, usually businesses or law firms—and their approaches usually fit one of two classifications. So-called “secondment firms” dispatch their pre-vetted lawyers to work in-house at a client site on a temporary or long-term basis. Senior attorneys can act as general counsels, and more junior ones help with overflow from busy in-house departments.

Meanwhile, “accordion companies” assemble networks of attorneys available to help small or mid-size firms or businesses expand to meet temporary surges in workflow, such as the flurry of activity right before a trial.

The myth that part-time arrangements are the province of female attorneys with children is debunked by the diversity of New Model firms—lifestyle is an issue for attorneys of all stripes. Paragon Legal, a secondment-type firm, was started in 2006 to cater to mothers of younger kids, but its founder, Mae O’Malley, says she’s now “proud to be attracting men” to her firm.

“Men really do want work-life balance,” says Williams. “They are just as dissatisfied with these all-or-nothing jobs and they are leaving.” According to O’Malley, Paragon Legal’s opportunities for work-life balance have attracted several younger lawyers to apply. (These firms don’t appear to be substantially less competitive, either: O’Malley says Paragon only accepts about 10 percent of applicants.)

The cost of all this personal time comes in the form of a smaller salary—but how much smaller? As one New Model founder is quoted as saying in the U.C. Hastings report, these attorneys “are not making money hand over fist, but for the number of hours they put in, they’re well compensated.” While salaries vary widely, the report estimates that lawyers working full-time at a secondment firm can make between $300,000 and $500,000 a year.