Office Space for Legal Firms: What's next?

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Office Space for Legal Firms: What’s next?

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Introduction As the cost of floor space increases and rents get higher, law firms in the UK have had to make certain changes to their ways of working in order to adapt.

A report by real estate advisor CBRE showed that rents for the 100 largest law firms in London rose by 7% to an average of ÂŁ43 per sq ft in 2015 and so many firms have reduced space and reorganised their offices in order to offset this1.

Some firms have taken this as a cue to move away from London, and when it becomes clear it is not possible to move lawyers away from the capital, firms have considered moving their support staff out of the country into Europe where rents and wages are cheaper.

However, leaving an expensive real estate space for a postcode with a lower price-tag is not always the answer. Moving costs, disruption to

business and the ability to recruit and retain staff are all major considerations.

Instead of relocating, many of the big names have chosen to embrace an open plan layout for their new office designs in order to accommodate more employees in less space. However, others have been reluctant to make this change and insist that the traditional model of cellular offices is the only suitable solution for the legal sector.

So can open plan working be a viable solution for law firms, and are there other changes that can be made to meet the needs of changing times?

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Workplaces now

Open-plan working

The open plan office design has been around for a number of years now, and the debate still continues about the pros and cons it brings to a workplace. Of the many positives it brings, encouraging collaboration among employees is an important one, and one that may best appeal to law firms.

In 2014, DLA Piper made the decision to create an open plan space in 4

their Sydney office2, stating that their motivation was to better enable junior lawyers to have firsthand opportunities to see how more experienced practitioners work and to engender a greater team feeling.

In an interview with Australasian Lawyer, the Sydney office Managing Partner, Onno Bakker, said: “We have much more intergroup communication because of

OFFICE SPACE FOR LEGAL FIRMS: WHAT’S NEXT?

the open plan. There’s a lot more space we can now use to grow and take on more people.”

An open plan office can improve the knowledge exchange between employees; simply sitting together with colleagues and not in an office behind a closed door opens up opportunities to talk to workmates or even ask for help when it’s needed. Colleagues can also overhear what others are discussing – and rather than this being an invasion of privacy, it could lead to a solution to a problem, or a new idea that hadn’t been thought of before.

The most obvious benefit to a business for switching to an open plan design is the cost savings it will bring.

A report from CBRE3 found that law firms operating in an open plan office pay 20% less rent, and occupy on average 23% less space per fee-earner. The report goes on

to say that the total floorspace occupied by UK law firms in the CBRE Legal 100 has fallen 9% since 2012 or 725,000 sq ft, resulting in an annual saving of £7 million.

Many UK firms have been the most active in fully embracing alternative workplace strategies, including adopting an open plan configuration, such as CMS, DWF, BLM and Ince & Co. A total of 18 firms in the CBRE Legal 100 currently operate in open plan.

20% Law firms operating in an open plan office pay 20% less rent

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Focus on

Herbert Smith Freehills LLP As one of the world’s leading law firms, Herbert Smith Freehills LLP advise many of the biggest and most ambitious organisations across all major regions of the globe. When the sixth floor of their headquarters in Exchange House, London needed updating and modernising they appointed furniture consultants Sketch to advise, procure and install furniture for employees including partners, fee earners and secretarial staff.

Although an open-plan environment was created for certain parts of the business – namely the support staff – the decision was made for the majority of the workplace to remain as cellular offices.

“Typically, lawyers want to work in their own offices”, suggests Herbert Smith Freehills Building Services Manager, Stuart Moles. “It’s fundamentally an issue of privacy as lawyers tend to work on one specific

case at a time, and they need a place where all their information can be kept to hand. They also have to make a lot of phone calls, and really the presumption is that an open plan environment will be too distracting to work in.

We always endeavour to use the space as effectively as possible, and currently we don’t feel that changing to open plan will be a more efficient use of space. Saying that, open plan is never completely off the radar and we know we have to remain open to new ways of working when they are needed. We just don’t feel it is right for us right now.”

All cellular offices within the building are the same size for all employees, regardless of seniority, and recently the firm decided to implement a ‘sit/

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OFFICE SPACE FOR LEGAL FIRMS: WHAT’S NEXT?

stand’ environment by installing height-adjustable furniture. This was a big change from the previous working environment and was brought about following a similar move by the firm’s German office, but also because it was asked for by staff.

“We were having constant requests for employees to change the height of desks to suit different needs, so we decided to make the switch to all sit/stand workstations as part of the refurbishment,”

very well received and used by everyone.”

Height adjustable workstations bring many benefits for users due to the way they encourage movement in the office. Endless research has shown that a sedentary lifestyle is detrimental to health, and by encouraging employees to cut the amount of time they spend sitting every day, workplaces are making well-being an important part of office life.

“Across the floor, the feature has been 7

What’s next?

Agile working Agile working is about people making4 informed choices about where and with whom they would like to work.

It does not discourage working in the office with colleagues and clients and nor does it suggest any one way of working is better than another. It relies on an assumption that employees are free to work wherever is best for them and the task they have in hand – either with or without technology – whether that is in an office, at home, a coworking space, a cafe, park or hotel lobby.

A recent article in The Lawyer5 highlighted that a number of firms, including Olswang, Mayer Brown and Dentons have confirmed they are launching agile working initiatives, while Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Herbert Smith Freehills all revealed that they had made agile working available to partners last year.

Increasingly offices are not only adopting the functions of spaces

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such as cafes, parks and homes, they are adopting their forms too. Agility is not only apparent in the way we use spaces outside of the office, but inside it too and that is changing everything. The idea of agile working is closely associated with a range of the most important benefits most commonly ascribed to informed office design, including wellbeing, productivity, collaborative work, knowledge management, innovation, sustainability, personal development, work-life balance and – ultimately – the bottom line.

It allows organisations to grow, change and work in new and better ways, often without relocating or taking on more floor space and it can help the organisation and the people who work for it to meet a range of long term challenges.

OFFICE SPACE FOR LEGAL FIRMS: WHAT’S NEXT?

Agile working opens up new possibilities for organisations precisely because it is a nonlinear way of thinking about office space.

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What’s next?

Co-working

Co-working spaces are unlike typical office environments. For one thing, these particular workspaces are not usually inhabited by just one organisation. For another, the spaces in question generally appeal to professionals who work from home or elsewhere remotely, such as freelancers or people who travel frequently.

Co-working is rapidly gaining momentum as a new way of working for many firms. In fact, it’s becoming so popular that a study by Emergent Research has predicted that globally, co-working

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membership will grow about 40% per year to pass 1 million members by 2018.

A report6 (Agile Working Report: The Co-Working Craze) by The Lawyer suggested that co-

OFFICE SPACE FOR LEGAL FIRMS: WHAT’S NEXT?

40%

Co-working membership will grow 40% per year to pass 1 million members by 2018.

working is particularly appealing to millennials, so a firm looking to attract new, young talent, could find that adopting this type of environment could be a strong draw.

The report also discussed the value of the collaborative space: “For lawyers active in the knowledgebased industries in particular, coworking offers them the opportunity to mingle with potential future clients.

Co-working also offers a solution to the problem of seclusion that many of workers experience while working at home or away from an office.

This style of working can allow

people to escape the distractions of being at home or of being sandwiched between loud people in a coffee shop. However, the balance has to be right; in the 2016 CoWorking Forecast by DeskMag7 , coworking-space members were asked to rank the problems they faced in their space and almost onethird cited an insufficient internet connection as the main problem.

In second place was noise (24%), lack of privacy (15%), and difficulty concentrating (17%).

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What’s next?

Technology Technology and the fast pace in which it is evolving is undoubtedly a major factor in workplace behaviour and therefore in design.

Younger generations coming into the workplace are ‘digital natives’ and have grown up with an expectation of what the available technology should be.

The capability to ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) is a trend that supposes the technology owned by employees may well surpass what the company is providing, and agile working requires essential Wi-Fi connections, plus reliable ways to connect devices from anywhere within the work environment – or even outside of it.

The 2016 Law in London report from CBRE8 suggested; “Technology has already changed the way lawyers work and will continue to have a major impact. Mobile devices and secure, remote access to documents will be key drivers of flexible and agile working.”

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The report went on to note that the recent office fit-out for global firm CMS included tablets for all fee-earners, and international firm Nabarro are using virtual desktops to allow staff to work from home one day a week.

Stuart Moles, Building Services Manager at Herbert Smith Freehills, believes technology is the biggest driver behind the changing ways in which his firm works: “Technology is one factor in enabling us to attract new talent. We’re fishing in the same pool as our competitors for talent so we need to demonstrate we are able to provide the best working environment possible.

We’ve seen with the younger guys coming through that they want to be able to use their own iPads and Skype for Business.

OFFICE SPACE FOR LEGAL FIRMS: WHAT’S NEXT?

Technology has already changed the way lawyers work and will continue to have a major impact.

We encourage flexible working; gone are the days when the office is the only place for work.

the technology to support them. We are currently trialling the use of a tablet, and this will eventually be rolled out to all of our lawyers.�

Now people can work from home, coffee shops or hotels if they have 13

Conclusion The legal sector may not always be early adopters of new workplace trends. The majority of work undertaken by law firms is by nature extremely private, confidential and detailorientated, so the type of working environment needed cannot avoid being dictated by this first and foremost.

However, many firms understand the need to stay on top of workplace advancements – whether this is driven by progressive technology, the war for new talent or purely for the productivity and well-being of employees.

Many changes have already been made by some of the leading law firms across the world, and it looks set to be an interesting and innovative landscape for those considering workplace design in the future.

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OFFICE SPACE FOR LEGAL FIRMS: WHAT’S NEXT?

Sources 1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/commercial/uks-biggest-law-firms-downsizeas-london-rents-increase/ 2 http://www.australasianlawyer.com.au/news/dla-piper-reverses-traditional-workspace-with-new-sydney-office-188531.aspx 3 http://www.cbre.co.uk/uk-en/services/central_london/research_london 4 http://www.areasq.co.uk/news-knowledge/agile-working-can-help-us-to-meet-oureveryday-challenges-and-transform-eve 5 http://www.thelawyer.com/issues/16-may-2016/agile-working-report-the-co-working-craze/?nocache=true&adfesuccess=1 6 http://www.thelawyer.com/issues/16-may-2016/agile-working-report-the-co-working-craze/?nocache=true&adfesuccess=1 7 http://www.deskmag.com/en/2016-forecast-global-coworking-survey-results 8 http://www.cbre.co.uk/uk-en/services/central_london/research_london

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