Arizona Attorney - January 2014

how does today’s agile law firm prepare and
adapt?
In answer to that, let’s look just at the
individual offices and how they are likely to
change.

If you look in every lawyer’s office in the
country today, the first thing you will notice
is a very large work surface. We call it a desk.
It is typically horizontal, it will be 30 inches
off the ground, it will typically be L-shaped
and it will yield a surface area of roughly 26
square feet, on which the lawyer can place
files, books and notes, a phone, an address
book (Rolodex) and schedule book, and per-
haps some family photos. None of that has
changed in 50 years or more. But it will defi-
nitely change in the next 5 to 10 years:
• The work surface for younger lawyers will
change dramatically, and it will change
from horizontal to vertical.

• Lawyers will do more and more work on
computer screens. As they do that, they
will likely want and need larger or more
screens.
• They will no longer have law books as
those will be 100 percent electronic. They
will no longer have files, as these too will
be electronic.

• Believe it or not, they also will not have phones on their desks. Handsets are tremendously inefficient. The phone will be run through VOIP directly from their computers (allowing them to make calls from their phone book, which will also be electronic). Calls will be made through a headset, leaving their hands free to type (not write) their notes.

• Gone also, of course, will be Rolodexes
or paper schedules.
• Even the precious family photo is being
replaced by screen savers showing a
slideshow of hundreds of photos.
Some of this has happened already, of course.
The rest is coming.

So what does this mean for law firms? Well,
Once law
firms realize
they can get the same amount of
economic output from a lawyer at
a smaller desk, there will be an
epiphany that will lead to an examina-
tion of all aspects of a lawyer’s office.

The credenza or filing cabinet will
be analyzed and then disappear. In

1985, it was useful. It held some files, was a place to put your family pictures and a lamp and in many cases was where older partners put a computer they would barely use (or not use at all). Today, it is superfluous.

In 2014, paper files are on the way out.
They will be virtually gone from the indi-
vidual office of lawyers before 2020. The
reasons for this are many.

First, paper files are expensive to main-
tain. You need a lot of real estate to hold a
filing cabinet. A lateral filing cabinet takes
six square feet of space. When load and cir-
culation are included in the calculation, the
number swells to nine square feet per cabi-
net. A credenza—really a small filing cabi-
net—takes up 10 square feet. If you no
longer have paper files, it seems wasteful
to store piece of furniture that have no
purpose.

Additional changes are coming.

Several years ago, a large New York law firm did a survey when relocating its 250,000-square-foot office in midtown Manhattan. The results showed that on any given day 25 percent of its lawyer offices are vacant. At first this number may surprise. But consider that there are always lawyers on vacation or out sick. There are always lawyers traveling to and from client offices, some percentage of lawyers work from home, and others are in court. The office costs are significant—especially in light of the high percentage of space in individual offices dedicated to meeting space.