Corner offices are out; Collaboration is in. Say hello to the new law firm.
In January, the law firm Crowell & Moring traded its New York office in an early 1980s building in Midtown Manhattan for a newly built space on the West Side, with sweeping views of the Hudson River and New York Harbor.
But it wasn’t just about getting a better view. The law firm’s previous office layout was “essentially wasted space,” said Philip T. Inglima, president of the firm. Crowell & Moring is making better use of the square footage in the new location, with features such as sit-stand desks, video technology for hybrid meetings and double glazing for sound insulation, Mr. Inglima said.
Larger law firms across the country have lost space even as they have added attorneys. The unexpected staying power of remote work has hastened the goal of many to downsize their real estate.
“We don’t have everyone in the office all the time, so we don’t necessarily need a larger footprint,” said Sharis A. Pozen, regional managing partner of law firm Clifford Chance for the Americas.
The rule of thumb used to be 1,000 square feet per lawyer, but the new benchmark is closer to 600 square feet, says Thomas Fulcher, vice chairman at Savills, the real estate services firm.
The result is that law firms are doing more with less.
Spacious corner offices, epitomized by shows like “Suits” and the 1980s hit “LA Law,” are rare and are being replaced by collaboration spaces and multimedia-equipped conference rooms. Lawyers of all ages, including the so-called rainmakers, now sit in similarly sized offices with uniform furniture.
Consistency also means flexibility: spaces can be easily transformed for different purposes, and because lateral movement between companies is a constant in the industry, it’s easier to hand over a neutrally designed office to a new partner.
Physical libraries, long a hallmark of law firms, have gone the way of the landline and the dictaphone. Court decisions are now released digitally; As a result, physical casebooks have become relics, often relegated to use as television props.
And most importantly, walls of filing cabinets – and so-called war rooms, filled with towering stacks of paper – are becoming obsolete as more documents are digitized.
That can mean some tough decisions for lawyers who may need to get rid of their documents before moving to a new office (although it helps that firms often rent off-site storage). “We weren’t ruthless, but we were quite aggressive” about what to carry and what to throw, said Glen G. McGorty, the managing partner of Crowell’s New York office.
Renting less office space often does not always translate into savings. Newer, high-quality offices often have a higher price tag per square meter. Ultimately, companies “could end up paying the same amount” or even more, Mr. Fulcher said.
That’s a deal companies are willing to make. Washington-based law firm Venable has moved its New York office to a space in Times Square with more light and new video calling technology, said Stuart P. Ingis, chairman of the firm.
But the new digs bring higher rent. “If we had stayed, we would have saved money, which would have meant more distributable income for the partners at the end of the year,” he said.
Not all companies are shrinking in physical size. For example, Paul Weiss said last year that it was moving its New York office to a larger office, in what was marketed as the largest commercial lease of 2023. Last summer, Davis Polk extended its lease in Midtown Manhattan, expanding its footprint by 4.4 percent to 700,000 square feet.
Law firms have been a bright spot in the otherwise pressured commercial market, leasing 7.8 million square feet in 2023, up 45.1 percent from 2022 and the highest level since 2019, Savills said.
Conference rooms are being built to accommodate the latest audio and video technology, and new designs include small but significant changes, such as power outlets on individual seats, so lawyers no longer have to work for them. Larger firms have spaces for virtual hearings after many judges switched to remote proceedings at the start of the pandemic, said Catherine Heath, the CEO of HYL Architecture in Washington.
Clifford Chance, which has about 3,700 lawyers worldwide, is planning a move to Manhattan’s West Side from its Midtown offices. The new office is 13,000 square meters on four floors, approximately 25 percent smaller than the current space. That reduction comes as the firm’s New York office grows to 275 attorneys.
The new configuration “is very different from the traditional one,” Ms. Pozen said, with room for collaboration to accommodate a “work policy that requires people to come at least three days a week.” Wooden office doors have been replaced by clear glass. “There are places where you need privacy, including nursing rooms for new mothers,” she said.
The move to smaller offices is happening nationwide, not just in expensive markets like New York or Los Angeles. In Chicago, for example, Chapman and Cutler had expanded for years in the same building where the company was founded in 1913. (It had also added some space in nearby buildings.) But sentimentality played no role when the company’s management took real estate needs into account because the building had become too outdated.
There was “a lot of interior space and very little access to natural light,” says Kelley M. Bender, the company’s chief operating partner. And it would be difficult to adapt the old offices to today’s technology, including the technology needed for hybrid meetings.
The company also recognized that the workforce had changed, requiring less space. Lawyers who commit to returning to work three days a week are assigned their own office; those who still don’t have an office space, “but not necessarily one with their name on the door,” Ms. Bender said.
Chapman’s decision was in line with others in the Chicago market, said Daniel Arends, chairman of the law group at Colliers, a real estate services firm. He added that in the past nine years, 33 law firms have shrunk by an average of 33.53 percent.
Since the pandemic, companies have focused more on things like air filtration and acoustics, which have become especially important with the increase in hybrid meetings. And in addition to the emphasis on large windows, there is more interest in improved artificial lighting; architects and designers are more likely to integrate direct, ambient and task layers, says Sherry Banaei, architect and creative director at Studio Alliance, a design firm in Washington.
Banks are unusual; After all, lawyers must maintain confidentiality, and privacy is more difficult to control in open spaces. But other office design elements, such as wellness areas, have also become popular. And recreation has come to the fore: Few will admit to adding a foosball table, but Venable does have a regulation bocce court in his Washington office.
There is an impressionistic view that new offices with sufficient light will encourage employees to return to the office more often without strict enforcement of a back-to-work policy. In Venable’s new New York office, the theory holds up, Mr. Ingis said.
Before the move, lawyers were only in the office one day a week, despite a three-day-a-week policy. Now they come in more often.
“Our staffing now matches our established policy – if not better – because people enjoy going to work because of the quality of our offices,” said Mr Ingis. “We did that part well.”