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.”

Even if they may lag in terms of maximizing space efficiency, “many law firms have been forward-thinking in creating dynamic workspaces that foster collaboration, mobility and flexibility,” according to Arends' report. His suggestion for the firms: “To address inefficiencies, consider evaluating which business functions are strategic and which are tactical.”

Strategic functions—including planning, debate and collaboration—mandate face-to-face

interaction. Tactical operations, on the other hand, can be carried out without the participants

having to be in the same room.

Arends recommends that law firms integrate their strategic functions into the fabric of key offices. Conversely, he suggests relocating tactical functions to lower floors of the building, where the rents tend to be lower as well.  These functions may also be shifted to more cost-efficient markets, and in some cases outsourced, with a view toward decreasing real estate needs.

In its recent report on law firms' use of office space, JLL notes that the firms have scaled back their office footprints by an average of 22.2% and cut annual rent-per-attorney by 12.1%, from an historical average of $38,535 to $33,879 today. JLL says law firms anticipate further near-term rightsizing to reduce costs by another 18.8% and square footage by 17.7% toward a national target of 625 square feet per attorney.

Thus far, JLL says, these space reductions have come from the adoption of automated libraries and office systems, rather than representing a dramatic change in workplace strategy—single-attorney offices remain the norm. However, JLL's report notes that many have shrunk cubicles for support staff, and outsourced some workflow to smaller, less expensive markets.

“What firms save on rent can be invested in new space that better meets firm and employee preferences,” says Elizabeth Cooper, co-lead of JLL's law firm practice group. Yet JLL isn't seeing see law firms moving to the hoteling model or bench seating arrangements that consulting and technology companies tend to favor. Rather, the legal industry is creatively reducing its footprint while giving attorneys the space and privacy they need to work effectively.”