Eagle's nest

Published on Tue 3 Jan 2012

The thriving legal market provides rich picking for architects and designers, says Ann Clarke. But what is the bestsort of office for law firms battling it out for the best talent ina tight labour market?

One group of graduates that has less cause to worry about the repayment of student loans than many is the latest brood of legal eaglets now hatching in the UK's law schools. Legal practices in the City of London alone are expecting to take on an additional 7000 people over the next three years. According to a survey by consultancy Atisreal, nearly 90 per cent of law firms in the City are expecting to increase their headcount with around 80 per cent of international law firms expecting to increase their staff numbers in London by over 20 per cent during that period.

This is great news if you're a lawyer, and a bit of a headache if it's you that has to recruit and retain them. And while the main battleground may be drawn around the hearts and minds of their prospective employees, the firms also have to worry about where all these new people are going to sit.

That is why over a third of firms are expecting to relocate over the next three years. With the majority of firms wedded to their traditional locations in the City and surrounding areas such as Holborn (around 15 per cent of all space in the City is accounted for by law firms) the costs of the refurbishment and fit out of the additional 2 million sq. ft of space needed to accommodate the growth in staff numbers is estimated at around £240 million.

For Practices already active and considering their property strategy, this new tranche of development offers both great opportunities and a challenge. A greater awareness of the role the physical environment plays in attracting and retaining staff is becoming more apparent.

The pressure on firms to attract the best people and keep the ones they already have means they must offer much more than money. It means taking on workplace issues. Salary is always a factor in hiring, but when salaries are comparable, factors such as the workplace environment are increasingly considered as a barometer of potential for the best employees.

For law firms this means creating the sort of workplace with features and amenities that add to job satisfaction, status and productivity. At the heart of the debate of how law firms function is the ongoing tug for them to relinquish their private offices and move into the open. While for many firms in other sectors, open plan is the way, cellular space can be important for law firms in attracting people and allowing them to choose how they work. The cellular office projects some key messages about identity, privacy and status issues which are important, especially when facing clients. So whether you go cellular depends on the culture. Having a glazed office with the door open for most of the time works for most people.

The choice to provide cellular space is largely determined by how the firms wants to be perceived and about their culture. If there is a strong focus on billable hours, you will tend towards the cellular. If your concerns are broader then you will tend towards greater openness.

What is clear is that if law firms want to attract the best talent in an ever tightening labour market, the way in which they design and manage their offices can play an important role in helping them to meet their goals.

*Picture by scottchan