03.19 Legal Briefs - LSAG Newsletter

What is Everybody Else Doing? The technology, financial, and media industries are the ones driving current workplace trends that are being deployed today. These companies, and a few progressive law firms, have grasped a keen understanding that younger generations of the work force want to work in stylized environments that support collaboration, reinforce a flattened non-hierarchical structure, hold trust-based policies and processes that encourage mobility and movement, health and wellness, diversity, and agile work models. Their workplaces increasingly are taking on more hospitality-like and residential characteristics with cues coming from a variety of non-workplaces such as hotel lobbies, restaurants/ cafes, co-working environments, business clubs, retail, spas, and gym facilities. The overarching message is: offices should look less and less like an “office”. Law firms are increasingly interested in hearing and seeing what trends are emerging from outside of the legal sector. What is everyone else doing? For most of the corporate office landscape, workplace design is focusing and prioritizing the following design drivers: • Health and wellness (i.e. sit-stand desks, promote physical movement over sedentary stillness) • High touch/Concierge level of user experience • Non- corporate, hospitality look and feel • Top quality amenities (i.e. best coffee, great food) • Maximized transparency (i.e. access to light, views) • Seamless and intuitive technology • Democratization of space • Untethered staff – Agile

What is viewed as a progressive

working (providing variety and choice) • Blurred boundaries between formal and informal, ‘work’ and ‘social,’ client facing and staff areas Global Issues and Differentiators Concerns over billing rates, outsourcing, retaining and attracting talent, providing environments to encourage mentoring, collaboration, and collegiality integrating sophisticated technology are not restricted to law firms within the United States. These concerns are global in nature, changing the complexion of the workplace. Interestingly, although the issues driving change in law firm design are global in nature, design solutions have diverged quite differently. What is viewed as a progressive workplace model in the US is understood to be the status quo in many other parts of the world. As law firms in the US recently have accepted single size offices, law firms in both Australia and the UK have moved far beyond this to more hybrid, flexible, and agile working models. In some cases, all attorneys are supported through open plan concepts. Although the US and Australia are aligned culturally in so many ways, it’s fair to speculate the key causal reasons for variation in our design models: 1. US law firms are often hierarchy focused: Defining how hierarchy translates into the design of office space is still a top priority for law firms in the United States. As firms increasingly speak about a desire (need) to revolutionize, they are often paralyzed to do so, as they continue to be inclined to align workspaces to titles. While Millennials are seemingly repelled by celebrating entitlement, in the US, Baby Boomers are still the

workplace model in the US is understood to be the status quo in many other parts of the world.

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