Recognizing real trends.
The advantage is having the opportunity to look forward. We see what most cannot.
Our focus is on the future.
Cost is still an issue
- Substance over status: economic pressures are the impetus for some change; but disruptions in the industry are also creating change.
- A shift in thinking and anew approach to space and talent is required for the legal workplace of today.
- Flexibility and remaining nimble to respond to an uncertain future is paramount.
- Law Firm profits are at an all time high due to cost containment and increased legal matters.
Legal teams are replacing individual stars
- Clients now judge law firms by the quality of the legal team rather than an individual lawyer.
- As a result, law firms are under increased pressure to foster teamwork among attorneys who are often spread out across several locations.
- The private office; however, is the prime reported location for both focus and collaboration, serving as a site for individual work and small team meetings.
Quality of life concerns are creating multiple attorney tracks
- Fewer young lawyers will aspire or have the partner track available to them.
- In its place are a range of developing professional tracks that incorporate quality of life concerns.
- These factors are changing the recruitment, technology, flexibility to work from different locations, and the ability to balance professional and personal life.
Firms are spreading out geographically
- Firms are re-thinking their businesses; leveraging improvements in information and technology to operate more efficiently across wider geographies.
- Providing clients with greater access to resources remotely.
- Newer sources of talent, lower real estate costs, virtual teaming, and leveraging secondary office locations that offer better quality of life for non-partner-track attorneys.
Firms are actively seeking workplace innovation
- Increasing recognition that the workplace can be used as a tool for engagement, recruitment, and brand quality.
- Some law firms, both in the U.S. and overseas, have gone to open-plan environments.
In the U.S., the private office isnt going anywhere... at least for now
- Cost pressures have put the private perimeter office in the crosshairs of workplace innovation.
- While international firms experiment more freely with open office environments; top U.S. law firms surveyed report the need for private offices due to confidentiality and its importance in the recruitment and retention process.
© 2021 Avison Young. All rights reserved. E. & O.E.: The information contained herein was obtained from sources that we deem reliable and, while thought to be correct, is not guaranteed Avison Young Commercial Real Estate Services, LP (“Avison Young”)
