PHILADELPHIA, PA AND CLARK, NJ—Demographic and working style changes are creating strong pressure for radical changes in office space buildouts, and these changes are moving rapidly into the legal and financial sectors, according to experts in the design requirements for those professions.

Law firms are seeking new ways to build consensus and affect change to adjust to this evolving reality, according to Sherry Cushman, executive managing director and leader of Cushman & Wakefield's Legal Sector Advisory Group. Philadelphia law firms are likely to feel the effects of an office space shakeout currently underway in New York, she says.

“New York is going through a legal sector transformation, with some megafirms like Skadden [Arps], Millbank [Tweed], Boies, Schiller [& Flexner] breaking out of the traditional mold of downtown markets,” she says. “All of a sudden they're saying, 'the product is old, the floors are inefficient, they don't have the good window lines, and if we want to reinvent ourselves, we just can't do it in existing product.' Hence, we're seeing a flight to quality in markets all across the United States.”