Chicago skyline, overlooking Lake Michigan. (Photo: Choose Chicago)

CHICAGO—“In many industries, the square feet per office worker continues to decline,” according to a Colliers International report on the legal sector's office space use. “In contrast, law firms that have recently signed leases averaged 873 square feet per attorney, while law firms nearing the end of their leases averaged 790 square feet per attorney.”

The author of that report, Daniel Arends, serves as chair of the national law firm practice at Colliers from the firm's offices in Chicago. “If there's one thing I know from working closely with clients in the legal industry, it's that efficiency is key for most lawyers,” he writes. “While lawyers are very deliberate about how they use their time in the office, I have noticed that many law firms are still looking for the right way to use their office space efficiently.”

That doesn't necessarily mean a focus on scaling down the size of their space, although efforts are underway across the legal sector. Notwithstanding the broader trend toward office space efficiency, Arends observes, “many leading law firms still maintain large offices in the most expensive real estate markets. And rightly so. For many firms, a large headquarters office in a primary market is an essential part of their business, recruitment and retention strategy. But law firms may be overlooking an opportunity to create meaningful cost savings by thinking about their space needs differently.”