At Thommessen, we invest in our key resource – our people. We invite you to read more about how we practise our commitment to learning, accomplishment and meaning for every TeamThommessen member. Making Thommessen a great place to work for each other is integral to who we are.
Working at Thommessen
OpportunitiesYour development
We are proud that business clients have ranked us the Norwegian law firm with the strongest legal expertise for seven consecutive years (Prospera, Kantar SIFO). Such a rock-solid reputation can only be built by everyone pulling in the same direction. We are devoted to learning from each other and working together in real teams.
Working at Thommessen means working with leading Norwegian and international businesses. We are at the forefront of new developments, which takes a lot more than legal expertise. Commercial law is not about rules and regulations alone, but about seeing the greater picture. It requires you and your team to consider issues in context and to genuinely understand the challenges facing our clients – from a commercial, social, political and global perspective.
Unique understanding springs from unique collaboration. As the first major law firm in Norway, we provide project management training for all personnel – followed by a university college exam. This gives us an excellent basis for creating strong teams whose team members complement each other and work closely together with our clients. Professional project management skills make every team member understand their role and their contribution in context. A key to our success is making everyone feel a valued team member, who makes a difference to our clients, to their colleagues and to themself.
We know that continuous learning and development makes people thrive and truly enjoy their work. Through the ThommessenSchool, which provides a comprehensive and continuous competence building program for all our personnel, our goal is to develop the best training program for the modern business lawyer. As part of achieving this goal, we launched a brand new onboarding and training portal in 2022.
Work environment
In order to work well together we also need to enjoy each other’s company. We are therefore committed to creating a friendly working environment, where everyone is seen and valued. We celebrate progress together and support each other when facing a bit of headwind.
After having worked from home for much of 2020 and 2021, we have defined the key aspects of Thommessen 2.0. The best of Thommessen has been combined with new experiences and new lessons on how we want to work together. In ordinary times, the office shall be our nexus – somewhere we want to come in order to meet each other and to work well with both colleagues and clients. It is nonetheless important for us to be able to also work efficiently and effectively, and to feel included, when we are working elsewhere and across our offices.
These are our headline priorities for Thommessen 2.0 – across teams and offices:
- Flexibility + fellowship: We believe that the flexibility to work from home will increase satisfaction, without reducing productivity – quite the contrary. We nonetheless enjoy meeting up physically, experiencing a sense of fellowship and having fun together. At Thommessen, each of us will be able to decide, based on the project framework, the best place to work. We will apply a 3:2 model – three office days and two optional days – and we organise our operations to facilitate this for everyone.
- Activity-based work: Our VIA premises in Oslo feature an activity-based landscape, specifically designed to encourage teamwork, knowledge transfer and innovation – which we believe are key to creating the law firm of the future. Everyone has an office space of their own, but many of us use it less than in a traditional office because people move around the premises and have more choices. When you are in the office, you choose where to work based on what you want to get done and who you are going to work with. Anyone needing complete peace and concentration may use one of the 43 quiet rooms in our office, which are equipped to match their own office space. Everyone is free to also work from home when that is the best option. We also have an activity-based office landscape in Stavanger. Moreover, we will be relocating to new Stavanger premises in 2023, which offer more room of expansion.
- Digital communications: Digital communications have boosted interdisciplinary and interoffice cooperation at Thommessen during the pandemic. This is a core feature of Thommessen 2.0.
- Test, learn, adapt: Nothing is cast in stone – we will test, learn and adapt along the way. One aspect of this is our involvement in an OsloMet research project studying the teamwork and knowledge sharing implications of how we work and where we work.
In addition to professional project management skills making every team member understand their role and their contribution in context, our working methods are aimed at bringing predictability to projects and workflows, thereby facilitating a good work-life balance.
"We need to be honest about the fact that being a lawyer in a commercial law firm is not a nine-to-five job. We charge high hourly rates, and availability is part of what our clients pay for. But there is a crucial difference between working long hours to successfully complete an exciting project, and working long hours because of poor time management. An advantage of working at Thommessen is that we work in teams. Well-composed teams whose members complement each other enable everyone to have a life outside their professional commitments, also during hectic periods."
Ylva B. Gjesdahl Petersen
Partner
Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities
We are actively seeking to create a firm characterised by more diversity. You and everyone else at Thommessen shall experience equal opportunities and shall feel comfortable about being yourself at work, irrespective of background, gender, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Our strategy includes specific targets for increasing the proportion of women among our senior attorneys and partners. In order to reach our targets, we have introduced a number of measures in relation to recruitment, management training, flexibility for staff with small children, etc.
In addition to increasing the proportion of women at the firm, we are also taking steps to become a more multiculturally diverse firm. Not only because we want to reflect the society we live in and because we as advisors aim to provide the very best service to a diverse range of businesses, but also because of our strong belief that diversity makes for a better and richer organisational culture.
We have established a diversity and inclusion committee (pictured) which will contribute to the work of develop a workplace that promotes equality and diversity, and an inclusive working environment where everyone feels seen, heard and respected for who they are. The committee consists of committed employees who want to contribute to Thommessen's environment and culture, and is an important collaboration partner for the management to achieve the company's goals related to equality, inclusion and diversity.
It is best for everyone if each of us feel that they can be themself at work. We are therefore delighted that the Thommessen employee survey confirms that such is the case in our firm. We also want new TeamThommessen members to be true to themself and enrich us with their own unique perspective.
Corporate social responsibility
Our contribution to society is not only reflected in the work we do, but also through the NGOs and projects we support. Corporate social responsibility is important at Thommessen, and you will as a TeamThommessen member be working with colleagues who care about other people and the society in which they live. You will also have the opportunity to engage personally with our NGO partners.
We support a number of excellent corporate social responsibility and pro bono projects. Knowledge is our most important resource, and sharing it is the best contribution we can make to enable NGOs pursue their mission under optimal conditions.
You are invited to read more about our involvement with our NGP partners by clicking the button below: Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Toppfotball Kvinner, =Kaffe, Big Enough Global, UN Global Compact, Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation and Oslo Cancer Cluster.
Photo: Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Sustainability
Well-functioning businesses are sustainable businesses. As advisors to both Norwegian and international businesses, we want to nudge them towards future-oriented and sustainable solutions.
Sustainability cuts across all industries and all aspects of business. Sustainable development will be a key priority, irrespectively of whether your speciality is tax, renewable energy, financing, public procurement, shipping or another field. We therefore took an early lead in establishing an interdisciplinary sustainability group with a specific sustainability and climate risk remit. This group is comprised of partners, attorneys and associates from different disciplines. Several members of this group have contributed to our Sustainability Database, which helps businesses navigate a plethora of sustainability initiatives and regulations.
In addition to working with our clients to advance their sustainable development agendas, we have an internal green committee; ThommessenZero, which is actively seeking to reduce Thommessen’s own greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts.
Would you like to read more about our efforts to promote the development and adoption of sound and sustainable business solutions? You are most welcome to visit our sustainability pages.
Innovation
As a TeamThommessen member, you assist businesses and clients with advice to simplify and solve problems. At Thommessen we use digitalisation as a tool to do precisely that. Pursuing innovation is about a lot more than merely new technology – more than anything it is about all of TeamThommessen coming together and being curious about new ways of adding value for clients. For us, digitalisation is quite simply about putting people first and using technology as a tool for improving efficiency and effectiveness. We do new things – together.
A designated Innovation & Development team with six members, including two developers, enables ideas developed in response to client needs to be fast-tracked into fully-fledged products.
Would you like to read more about our innovation approach and what products we offer our clients?
Follow us on social media
Our Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook posts provide an evolving snapshot of what happens at Thommessen. We invite you to follow us to get to know us better and get a feel for what it is like to be a member of TeamThommessen.
Social life
At Thommessen, our Events Committee invites everyone for social events on a monthly basis. Besides, our summer parties and Christmas parties are long-standing traditions. Every third year, all TeamThommessen members go on a major trip together. We are hoping to bring our much-anticipated Lofoten trip off the ground in the spring of 2022!
As a TeamThommessen member, you are also offered a range of other social activities, such as weekly soccer training, jogging group, cycling group, etc., under the auspices of the firm’s sports club. We have also completed boating licence training together this year, and quite a few of us are teaming up for cross-country skiing lessons this winter.
We enjoy celebrating our achievements together. Departments and teams joining up for social events outside working hours is therefore a frequent occurrence.