Law Firms (Slowly) Respond to Egalitarian Trends in Office Design
When visitors step off the elevator onto the 45th floor at Jenner & Block’s new Chicago offices, they stop to linger, transfixed by the views in a light-filled space that feels as if it floats.
If the firm wanted to impress with design that is confident, outward-looking and expansive, Jenner & Block succeeded. Yet for all its cutting-edge use of natural light, stone and wood, the floors where attorneys work adhere to traditions that the corporate world abandoned long ago.
At Jenner, as at most big law firms, private offices are the rule. A strict hierarchy prevails: secretaries in open pods, paralegals in cubicles, associates in offices by windows, partners in bigger offices, and senior partners in corner locations with the very best views.
“The traditional law firm layout hasn’t really changed,” says Jenner partner Donald I. Resnick, who chairs the firm’s real estate practice. “It’s become more efficient.”
Yet change is coming, slowly. Pushed by clients to cut costs, some law firms are experimenting with layouts that reflect new organizational structures and new ways of working:
• At Seyfarth Shaw’s new Atlanta office at 1075 Peachtree St. NE, no lawyer’s office is bigger than anyone else’s. Associates and partners alike work in universal 10-by-16-foot spaces. “We are very egalitarian, very entrepreneurial,” says Atlanta managing partner Steven Kennedy.
• At Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s new offices in the CBS headquarters building known as Blackrock, 51 W. 52nd St. in New York City, some associates’ offices were moved to the interior into space that traditionally houses files and support professionals. Glass was used throughout to bring light and views into every space. “With offices on both sides [of hallways], it creates a much more vibrant atmosphere,” says Peter A. Bicks, a litigation partner in charge of the New York office. “Partners are sitting right by associates with complete, open lines of sight. One of the goals is to encourage a more collaborative atmosphere.”
• When Morgan, Lewis & Bockius moved its Washington, D.C., office to 1111 Pennsylvania Ave. NW in 2001, the firm used prime space on a top floor—with dramatic views looking toward the White House—not for partners’ offices but for a dining center with an outdoor terrace available to everyone. “This was not uncontroversial,” says Stephen Paul Mahinka, chair of the firm’s interdisciplinary life sciences practice, who oversaw office design and construction. “It contributes to the collegiality of the firm.”
Continue reading “Changing Spaces” online in the June issue of the ABA Journal.
