Arizona Attorney - January 2014

G O RA N BO GIC EV IC © SH U T T ER S T OCK .C OM

CAN
THE
CREDENZA

BY JAMES ROBINSON

rooms on every floor for large firms, or even simply in bookcases lining the halls, these libraries used substantial square footage, at tremendous cost. But what choice did firms have? To output billable hours, you needed a library; the cost was justified.

• In 1985, before word processors, attorneys needed significantly more support staff. Every lawyer would have his or her own secretary, and some practice groups or more senior partners had significantly higher ratios of support staff to lawyer. Again, paying these secretaries was not frivolous; it was the only economic way to maximize the output of the partners and associates.

• Most important, the design
of individual offices was based
on a model of work that is
becoming outdated today.

This yielded a requirement
for larger offices capable of
providing significant work surfaces (desks),
filing space (credenzas, filing cabinets) and
meeting space (small tables, couches, chairs).

All of these imperatives increased the size of an effective partner’s office to as large as 15' 5 18'. That is an office space of 240 square feet (before an approximate 10 percent load factor, a 30 percent circulation factor and before accounting for space required for support staff). Including all factors, the actual square footage that could be attributed to a single typical partner might have been 380 square feet.

But all of these 1985 imperatives have been resolved through the use of technology. No one is designing law firm space today with extensive libraries, which are now electronic. Few lawyers have a dedicated secretary today. And, though it has been slow to happen in Arizona, the size of lawyers’ individual offices is shrinking.

So will this trend continue? If so, why? And

Technology, Economics Change Law Firm Offices

JAMES ROBINSON is the President of Phoenix Realty Advisors, a commercial real estate firm focused on the exclusive representation of office tenants.

Technology and economics are literally changing the shape of law firms. It is no secret that the world is a changing place. And in the face of that change, you either adapt or die. This evolutionary imperative is perhaps slower to affect law firms, but it is still ignored at great peril.

efore we predict what the law firm of 2018–2025 may look like, let’s examine the law firm of 1985 and how that model worked, and how it has evolved over the last 30 years. In looking back we recall that the amount of office space used per lawyer has shrunk by between 20 percent and 30 percent in that time span.

In 1985, law firms used much more space per lawyer than they do today. This is not because lawyers were frivolous. Law firms have always been economic animals, and office space is a significant cost, so they were not being wasteful.