The legal sector is in a period of immense and rapid change. For proof, you need look no further than the lobbies of the biggest firms in town.

Gone are the marble floors and oak-panelled offices. Brass name shields are relics of the past.

Partners today are just as likely to take clients to the in-house café as the flagship boardrooms.

Open-plan and hybrid set-ups are taking over the industry, and those who don’t adapt face being left behind. Yet this is no superficial facelift. Office layouts are symptomatic of deeper shifts in legal practice, striking to the heart of firms’ relationships with both their lawyers and their clients.

Trend spotting

It seems every week another law firm is announcing a shift to a new premise, or a major renovation to their current offices.

Bates Smart workplace strategy team members Kellie Payne and Tamara Young co-authored a white paper titled The New Legal Workplace in 2013 and are in the process of writing a follow-up.

“The legal teams were the last business, apart from academics, to lose their office,” Ms Payne says. “But once one team did it and everyone saw how the business has done well as a result, more and more firms are now looking at this way.”

In most cases, firms rejig their layout in a bid to free up additional room.

“By shifting their parametres and giving everyone equal space, firms can unlock almost 30 per cent of extra floor space,” Ms Payne says.

Firms are also re-evaluating how much room is required to house their growing ranks.

In 2002, the average law practice allocated 24 square metres per person. In 2013, when the white paper was released, this was down to 18 square metres per person. The paper predicted that by 2017 it could be a cosy 12 square metres per person, effectively halving in 15 years.

“We’re currently getting briefs in from legal practices asking us to allocate 13.5 square metres per person, so we think they’re right on track for that reduction,” Ms Payne says.

That extra space can either reduce the firm’s overheads or be used for shared spaces, the desire for which was the second key finding in the white paper.

“Firms’ business strategies are to try and get cross-departmental integration, trying to get different teams to talk to each other, share information, to better help their clients and deliver a more integrated service to them,” Ms Payne says.

Collaboration central

When firms were asked why they are embracing this change, one key word continually popped up: collaboration.

MinterEllison relocated its Sydney office in May 2015 and adopted a hybrid model, with a mix of open-plan and private offices. The firm now has eight floors in the Governor Phillip Tower at 1 Farrer Place in Sydney’s CBD, all connected by a central stairwell.

MinterEllison’s head of innovation, Andrew Cunningham, explains that more than 85 per cent of people sit in open-plan spaces. Only partners are given the option of having an office.

“While 60 per cent [of partners] originally went into offices, since then a number of partners have decided to come out of their offices and go in to the open plan,” Mr Cunningham says.

“I think that will be the trend, people will generally move out of the offices and they just become quiet working rooms.”

According to Mr Cunningham, the firm ultimately made the change to promote a more team-based working style.

“The open plan is generally arranged in groups of four or six work points and the idea was to have mixed teams, so a partner, a senior associate, a lawyer and a PA are all grouped and working together.

“There’s that collaboration you get working in open plan in work teams, but there’s also the collaboration you get just by moving through the tenancy and using the café and shared spaces.”

Global firm Ashurst has also recently moved both its Sydney and Perth offices into new buildings. Sydney is now in the iconic heritage listed ‘money box’ building at Martin Place, while the Perth office moved into their new home at Brookfield Place Tower 2.

“I believe the ‘traditional’ model of a law firm is changing,” Perth office managing partner Adrian Chai says.

“We have to be more agile to match our clients’ needs and the needs of being part of a global network.”

Sydney office managing partner James Marshall explains that the format they use across all Australian offices is a hybrid of open work stations and offices.

“It’s not quite the same open plan that other firms and organisations have adopted, as we think space, privacy and security are important in the nature of what we do.”

Mr Chai believes that a focus on innovation and collaboration has always been a part of Ashurst’s culture globally, but there has been a change in how they use the office space effectively.

“For example, our new staff break-out spaces have not only increased intra-office and cross-team communication, they have also facilitated social activities and helped foster a sense of community in the workplace,” he says.

“Collaboration is at the heart of our new offices, but we understand the importance of having a quiet place to retreat to if it’s needed and we have catered for that.”

Global firm Pinsent Masons, meanwhile, embraces open and collaborative working spaces right across its network, according to David Rennick, Pinsent Masons partner and head of Australia. The firm established itself in Australia last year, giving it an opportunity to start with a blank slate.

“The philosophy is very much that we have an open and collaborative working environment, and that’s because it provides fantastic learning opportunities, particularly for junior lawyers, and it fosters good communication. When we set up in Australia, we very much adopted that.”

Pinsent Masons has gone a step further than most firms and now considers its offices in Sydney and Melbourne to be a ‘work hub’, rather than a ‘work home’. All its Australian lawyers are encouraged to work remotely.

“Our offices in Sydney and Melbourne are modest, functional and good places to work, but it’s not about marble floors and elaborate catering and plush meeting rooms – that’s the law firm of the past in our view,” Mr Rennick says.

While the new offices are certainly attractive, not everyone is enamoured of the new approach. One firm that has rejected the open-plan trend is HWL Ebsworth, which has remained committed to traditional layouts in all its offices.

HWL Ebsworth recently relocated its Brisbane office to 480 Queen Street, citing the mental wellbeing of its professionals, productivity gains and confidentiality advantages as reasons why it stuck with individual offices.

“I cannot understand claims by other firms that open-plan accommodation encourages more collaborative behaviour,” Juan Martinez, managing partner of HWL Ebsworth, says.

“The degree of collaboration within a firm comes down to the desire of the individuals. Sitting someone in a sea of workstations will not lead to improved communication or collaboration if the personal drive and incentive is not there.”

Mr Martinez says that the feedback the firm has received from staff is that the noise and lack of privacy associated with an open-plan environment has a materially negative impact on productivity.

“Legal advice can be extremely complex, requiring absolute concentration, and having a third-party telephone call occurring two metres away from you can be an unnecessary distraction,” Mr Martinez says.

Fortinberry Murray principal and consultant Bob Murray believes that while firms often point to collaboration as their motivation behind open plan, in truth it is often to reduce real estate costs.

“There’s no evidence that open plan increases collaboration. What does increase collaboration is having open spaces where people can socialise together. That does increase collaboration, open plan doesn’t. In fact, it reduces it,” he says.

“The main reason they’re brought in obviously is because there’s a huge reduction in real estate costs.”

On top of this, Mr Murray suggests there’s evidence that open plan in fact decreases productivity.

“All of the studies that have been done on it over the last few years, show that productivity goes down by about 20 to 25 per cent,” Mr Murray says.

“They’re really, really bad; they’re productivity destroyers in that sense.”

Dan Cox, director of commercial interiors at Carr Design Group, agrees that open plan may not become the status quo for lawyers, suggesting quiet, private spaces are needed to work effectively.

“The complete open-plan model doesn’t consider the need for focused head down non-interaction time just to get the task done, which is very important in legal practice,” Mr Cox says. “I’m not saying we’re going to end up with everyone back in offices by any means, but what I do think is there’s going to be a greater balance of the open plan.”

Keeping options open

A key trend Carr Design Group has observed is a thirst for flexibility, Mr Cox says.

“Obviously as the legal landscape is changing with greater pressures to tighten their belts around how they operate, one of the key challenges is making sure that every single space doesn’t have just a singular purpose,” he says.

Mr Cox believes there is more focus on community areas, meeting rooms, chat-nook areas to work in and phone call rooms, allowing people to move with their laptop from one space to another.

“Compared to previous generations of fit-out, there is now a lot more choice around different work spaces, which enables the lawyers to make choices about where they work. They don’t have to spend their entire day at their desk.

“So while there may be the perception of losing something without an office, it’s all the added amenity that’s been given back in a different way that balances out.”

While all MinterEllison staff have dedicated ‘work points’ where they base themselves, 40 per cent of all of the seats in the tenancy are not allocated. Mr Cunningham suggests there are several benefits to keeping seats open.

“One, it promotes collaboration; two, it promotes more effective working; and, three, we actually want to have a very mobile workforce. We want to facilitate remote working, whether that’s from home or from clients’ premises. One of our objectives is to have our people working a lot more in clients’ offices and workspaces.”

At Pinsent Masons, the firm has gone even further in embracing remote working, with the number of seats in the tenancy much smaller than their expected number of lawyers.

“Our view is that the bricks and mortar part of law firms is less important than a more agile law firm,” Mr Rennick says.

“The way that works in terms of how the office is, is that we have de-emphasised the importance of our office. We want our lawyers and people out with clients, rather than in the office.”

The Melbourne and Sydney offices each have approximately 30 ‘working spots’, but they expect to be able to accommodate 50 to 60 people.

“That doesn’t mean that people sit on their laps,” Mr Rennick jokes.

“What it means is that we expect that as the business develops – and it’s already happening now – is that people will be out on the road more, working from home more, and working from clients’ offices more.

“We see the office as a hub for people to come and touch down, and that’s a really important part of working, but the philosophy is that it’s not your home – your home is where the client is.”

According to Mr Rennick, Australia is the first place Pinsent Masons has embraced that particular strategy, which he describes as a work in progress.

Further to this strategy, Pinsent Masons tailors its employment arrangement with each employee to suit their individual needs. Having a portion of staff on part-time or flexible schedules also has an impact on the layout of the office.

“It’s not a cookie-cutter approach to arrangements with people, because increasingly people are working in an agile way,” Mr Rennick says.

“Some lawyers frequently travel between Sydney and Melbourne for matters they’re working on, some don’t want to start work until later in the morning, and some only want to work six months of the year. All of those things have an impact on your layout because it’s silly to have an office or a desk for people who aren’t there all the time.”

Technology enabler

As offices have adapted to new working styles, technology has played a key role in new work layouts.

Mr Cox says there is a massive shift from having static technology, such as a landline or a PC, to more mobile options.

“The previous generation of fit-out was quite clunky with dial-up and it was always convoluted, but now there’s a real emphasis in the briefs that we’re seeing from legal [firms] to have flexible technology systems,” Mr Cox says.

The Bates Smart white paper also saw a similar trend of seeking to cater to staff who want to be mobile throughout the day.

“They want flexible technology so they can go from the desk to the café to the library zone, being able to touch down in another team and work with a colleague,” Ms Payne says. “This doesn’t mean that they lose their own desk, but rather that the whole technology system is set up that they can move seamlessly throughout the office, find all their documents and continue working wherever they are.”

Adding to this, the digitisation of the legal library has improved accessibility to legal books from remote locations – though perhaps sadly for bibliophiles, this has also often led to the decline of the legal library as the hub of the firm.

This tech flexibility is evident in the new MinterEllison, Ashurst and Pinsent Mason offices.

Mr Marshall says both Ashurst’s Sydney and Perth offices had a complete update of their IT with the latest technology installed to support collaboration, both within each office and to other Ashurst offices globally.

“We have 27 offices across the world and most are equipped with the infrastructure to support our global communication needs.

“Having access to state-of-the-art video conferencing at your fingertips, where you can have that personal face-to-face chat with a colleague in Singapore, or brief our legal services office in Glasgow on a matter, is invaluable.”

Meanwhile, all MinterEllison staff have dual screens, laptop-enabled desks, seamless wifi and wireless headsets, according to Mr Cunningham. “IT is a critical part of enabling everything,” he says.

Breaking down the barriers

Workspaces are not just aimed at changing internal dynamics, but breaking down barriers between clients and lawyers, as the Bates Smart white paper made clear.

“Firms have been looking at breaking down the barrier a bit more between the front of house space where their clients visit and the back of house space where the lawyers are, and trying to blend that space,” Ms Payne says.

“It’s all about building personal relationships rather than just impressing them.”

That is certainly the case at MinterEllison where the staff ’s café space is also used for more informal client meetings.

“Lawyers are welcome to bring clients to the café for non-confidential discussions and they get to see a bit more of the firm, there’s always a good buzz,” Mr Cunningham says.

“The central stairwell also allows clients to look down into where the rest of the people are working and break down some of the barriers between the front of house and back of house.”

By contrast, Mr Chai said that at Ashurst it’s not the break-out areas helping to facilitate client meetings, but the technology.

“Our experience is certainly that there are fewer in-person meetings nowadays than there have been in the past. We see more meetings conducted by teleconference, video conference and by web chat today than in the past.

“This change reflects advances in technology, the way we and our clients work, and where our internal resources and our clients are geographically located.”

Adapting to the new habitat

Lawyers have in the past been labelled as resistant to change – but firms report largely positive reactions to their new layouts, albeit with pockets of uncertainty.

While younger lawyers at MinterEllison may have taken the change more lightly, Mr Cunningham does not believe age played a major role in determining who was interested in going open plan.

“Even among the partners who have chosen to go open plan rather than into an office, that wasn’t simply a case of the younger partners doing it. In fact, it was a full cross-section, so that’s been more a frame of mind issue, rather than an age issue,” he says.

“Probably it’s been an easier change for the younger lawyers because they weren’t quite as used to the old system.”

Mr Marshall suggests embracing a hybrid model means that Ashurst is able to provide solutions for the needs of each team. In his experience, reactions varied depending on the type of work or needs of the individual lawyer.

“The stereotype of the older partner being attached to a ‘hierarchy’ and needing the corner office did not ring true for us,” he says.

“We have very senior partners who sit out in open plan with their team, we have partners who share offices with other partners or junior lawyers, we have a whole scope of arrangements available and I believe having that flexibility is important.”

At Pinsent Masons, Mr Rennick is in a position where he is still building his team. As a result, his approach is to employ people who are open and flexible as a starting point.

“One of the things we’ve done when we’ve recruited people is to ask them if they’re excited about doing things differently, being more agile, working from where the client needs you and working from home,” Mr Rennick says. “If we recruit people with that kind of mentality, it makes perfect sense that we have a more open, collaborative, flexible working environment. Real estate should be a function of agile working, rather than a driver of it.”

Despite the good news, Mr Murray has a word of warning. In his experience as a consultant and researcher, once people get used to being in an open-plan layout, they tend to object to it.

“About 70 per cent of people report feeling uncomfortable in open-plan layouts and would rather go back to traditional layouts,” Mr Murray says. “In fact in Germany, where open-plan offices originated, now there’s a huge movement back to more traditional layouts because they found that they really don’t work.”

He believes open-plan offices only work for extreme extroverts, with anyone else eventually feeling uncomfortable.

“They feel that they have no privacy and people don’t feel that they can really concentrate on their work because they’re always being disrupted.”

So how can we explain the positive reception reported by firms? In Mr Murray’s view, it’s a “placebo effect”.

“Every time you put in something new, people get excited. So a new layout is adopted and everyone thinks this is the start of something great, and it isn’t. They find they can overhear people’s conversations, particularly one-sided conversations, which to the human mind is incredibly stressing.”

On the other hand, Mr Martinez believes that some lawyers continue to value their private space, to the point of factoring in office layout in employment decisions.

“One of the first questions that I am being asked by potential lateral recruits is whether we are moving to open-plan accommodation,” he says.

“A significant portion of the industry are against it, and it is driving people to reconsider their employment situation.”

The bigger picture

The open-plan law firm is a fairly new arrival in the legal scene, with many lawyers still adjusting to their new world order. At this stage, it’s too early to determine whether Mr Murray’s predictions will come true.

For the firms, however, open plan is the clear path forward. Mr Cunningham indicates that over time the other MinterEllison offices will look to also embrace similar layouts, with Melbourne or Canberra next on the cards.

Looking to the wider industry, Mr Cunningham says he isn’t aware of any law firms building new offices with traditional layouts.

“I’d be very surprised if anybody now builds a fit-out which is in the traditional way. The whole industry is heading in this direction.”

Mr Chai also believes that the future of law firm office layouts will be driven by advances in technology and work practices of both firms and their clients.

“It is hard to look into the crystal ball and speculate what might be possible in the future when no one was using smartphones a decade or so ago, so I won’t try,” Mr Chai says.

“But we know that flexible work practices and arrangements are increasingly the norm across the industries in which our clients operate and are continuing to evolve.

“The firms of the future have to adapt and be configured to reflect this.”

Mr Rennick agrees with both predictions, adding that the cost of real estate is an inevitable contributing factor for firms.

“There will be some law firms that won’t do it because they just won’t, but the forward-thinking firms are doing whatever they can to turn fixed costs into variable costs,” he says.

“Real estate is your second biggest expense in most law firms, so the extent to which you can get better value out of your real estate is very, very important to go and deliver better value to your clients.”

While all this may be true, Mr Murray also points to two disruptors that he believes will have an even greater influence on how lawyers are utilised in law firms.

“One, the disruptor of technology is essentially going to mean fewer and fewer lawyers and fewer and fewer jobs for lawyers, as is the same with all professions,” he says.

“Two, we’re now learning so much more about how to manage people, how to organise people, how to lead people, how to make people satisfied in their work and how to make them far more productive.”

These two disruptors are going to make fundamental changes, not just in law but in every other profession and in the way that we structure the work place itself, according to Mr Murray.

“In every profession, and law is no different, the number of ‘professionals’ will be much, much smaller. So the issue is not so much what kind of workspace one works in, but how we’re going to use humans in the process of law,” he says.