Law Office Design

The environment in law offices today is rapidly changing. There is constant transition, whether in facilities or just the workplace in general. The business realities of the new millennia calls for such change and most successful law firms are implementing strategies and law office designs that reflects the dynamism of today’s work environment.

From Efficiency to Flexibility

Up to now, efficiency was the watchword of all law office designs. Each law office design scheme was focused on that one thing that made it possible to do more for less. However, with the recent changes in the way things are done, a gradual shift from efficiency to flexibility occurs.

Law office design is geared towards effectiveness – getting the job done better. And what better way to do that than to make as much room for change as possible? The law office design is comprised of re-thinking the problem and coming up with new and improved ways of doing things. An effective law office design, therefore, can only be achieved by understanding how lawyers work. It can only be done by internalizing a specific law firm’s culture and goals for the project.

Often, the primary goal of law office design is improving the bottom line. In order to achieve this more effectively, a law office designer must understand the specifics of how a firm works, how paper moves through an organization, what is important in recruiting, and by paying special attention to rainmakers. Take a small practice, for example. Small practices often have very little impact on occupancy costs, and quite a negative impact on a lot of attorneys’ daily life. Therefore, the right law office design must be one that addresses each of these characteristics.

How to Address Building Related Issues

There are certain issues related to the structure of the building which you might have to deal with when coming up with an effective law office design. Here’s how to deal with such issues:

* Select the right building footprint to match the law firm program
* Investigate larger, lower floors for support functions
* Off-site firm-wide and large litigation functions to a less expensive location
* Analyze law office design issues with lease agreement in mind (cost, duration, furniture and demountable construction systems)
* Match hours of use with lease terms, most law firms do not adequately evaluate their operating costs when negotiating a new lease with new operating costs
* Evaluate rentable to leasable and negotiate on that basis

Tips to Law Office Design

In law office design, there is actually more than one unit of space that you would have to consider. In a typical law firm, there are two general units that you need to manage effectively – attorney offices and the support space. It is under the attorney offices that the offices of the lawyers employed by the firm are located while the support space is where the reception area, conference center, compact storage, etc. are located.

Here are some tips to maintaining a good law office design in the attorney offices:

* Smaller offices for first year associates/senior paralegals
* Smaller associate offices with built-in furniture
* Smaller partner offices with workwall
* Smaller partner offices with adjacent, conveniently located, shared conference rooms
* Investigate same size attorney offices
* Retired partners suite
* Hotelling for branch offices/visitor offices