Happy New Year to All – Here’s hoping that this is a healthy and prosperous year for you.  

 

Continuing Part 2 of the story about our “law firm office of the future,” here are a few of marquis features of the new space we now occupy:

 · Every single attorney and member of our senior professional staff now sits in the exactly the same size office – we simply blew away the distinction between partners and associates. In addition, we materially reduced the size of the attorney offices, ending the legacy law firm model of having partners “living in palaces.” We believe we are one of the first, if not the first, law firm in Washington, D.C. to take these bold steps. You can be sure that I spent many a sleepless night worrying about my colleagues and their reaction to this dramatic departure from the “old economy” law firm office model. And, to be forthcoming, I did invest many hours of my time in individual “therapy” conversations with my partners helping them understand and ultimately embrace the need for this change. As we neared the end of construction, I was often terrified that I would face a massive rebellion after we moved in, but instead, my outstanding colleagues adapted beautifully to our transformed office environment. To speak with them now, you would think that they had always lived in the new offices they currently occupy.

· We eliminated the concept of hosting visiting attorneys and professionals in dedicated offices (i.e., in our new space, you will not find the old economy “visiting attorney” office). Instead we built dedicated communal “touch down” spaces, where the frequent visitors to our office can reserve a transient work station, dock in their laptops and get to work, sitting side by side with their colleagues. By leveraging our VOIP telephone system, our traveling attorneys can take their direct dial telephone numbers with them to our touch down areas, log those numbers into the associated telephones and instantly take calls as if they were sitting at their home office desks.

· Before we moved, if we lined up all of our paper files side by side in domino fashion, they would extend for about a mile. By the time of our move, we had reduced our required paper filing space by approximately eighty percent, from 4,400 to 800 lineal feet and this translated into a commensurate reduction in real estate required to store this paper. To achieve this stunning outcome, we had to develop a reliable system for scanning and profiling files in our document management system and we utilized RFID tracking technology to be able to find and retrieve our files from their physical storage locations. Most importantly, we simply did not build enough room to store paper files in the traditional way. Each attorney was allocated a certain amount of file space and any paper files that exceeded this allocation were scanned and eliminated. In total, we discarded over 35,000 gallons of paper that we no longer pay rent to store. One of my partners boasts that in anticipation of our move, he threw away or shredded the equivalent of ten large commercial size garbage pails of files (almost the size of a small condominium).

· We eliminated vestigial space uses from the “old school” law firm world, such as our library, and in their place, we designed numerous places for collaboration, connection and collegiality, including a lobby coffee bar and a fabulous community dining area.

· In every aspect of our design, we tried to anticipate the need for future change (change that we actually believe is more imminent than most attorneys anticipate). For example, we used non-structural demising partitions for windowed offices, facilitating office renovations, should they become necessary. We installed modular systems for interior offices and administrative staff work areas to enable us to redefine and reuse space as needed based on future changes in staffing and models for service delivery. As our office grows in attorney head count, this approach offers us the flexibility to increase the number of interior professional offices within our existing office footprint, thereby maximizing our office’s profitability by increasing office revenues without incurring a corresponding increase in our occupancy costs. Specifically, our administrative secretarial bays can be easily converted into interior offices through the use of this modular furniture. And, our accountants favor this approach since the modular furniture (and therefore, virtually the entire core of our office) can be depreciated over seven years instead of the more customary fifteen to thirty nine years.

· We committed to both “living in” an office building that embraced sustainability principles and to building environmentally-conscious office space, making LEED certification a priority. Toward those objectives, we selected a LEED platinum office building and our office design features water-conserving plumbing fixtures, materials and furniture made from recycled and/or sustainably managed products, and energy efficient lighting and controls. To provide a healthier environment for our staff, throughout our office we used non- or low-VOC emitting construction materials. Our office has also completed its review by the Green Building Certification Institute, and we achieved LEED Gold certification.

Designing and building a new office is a daunting challenge. Setting the bar high – to build the law firm office of the future – takes this challenge to an entirely new level (especially when you are talking about lawyers). By engaging in a thoughtful and disciplined process that was supported at every step by an extremely talented team of professionals and welcoming and trusting colleagues, we have not only positioned ourselves for the future but have achieved an exceptional result. As a real estate attorney, with particular insights into this process, I was privileged to be a central part of this project and I am very proud of the result we, together, achieved. My new and ongoing challenge is to develop a means by which I can share with our clients the best practices we employed to effectuate this result and to drive greater value to them as they undertake similar projects.

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