Law firm boom helps office interior design evolve

Real Estate Weekly, May 26, 2004 by Jeremy P. Lang

Law firms continue to be active players in the New York City real estate market, an indicator of the health of the legal profession and of the continuing, if slowing, pattern of mergers and acquisitions. Nonetheless, they are increasingly determined to seek the best possible economic solutions to their real estate needs.

Over the years, law firm occupancy characteristics have evolved and adapted to the changing business needs of the firms; but those same dynamic firms have not abandoned all of the traditional basic space profiles that architects and real estate advisors need to factor into their research and development of potential lease agreements.

Among the important standards that remain constant is floor plate size. Law firms still work most efficiently on floors between 20,000 RSF and 35,000 RSF, although successful exceptions exist on both sides of those "limits." These sizes work best because generally such floors produce a linear-perimeter-to-useable-square-foot interior ratio that corresponds well to the ratio of attorneys to support space.

We consistently find that modern law firms require about 38-43% of their total space for support functions, as distinct from attorney space at the window, or corridor and secretarial space. A small floor plate fails to produce this ratio, and (aside from the issues created from lack of horizontal adjacency), more expensive window space must be employed to achieve complete occupancy. On the other hand, with too large a floor plate--in excess of 40,000 RSF--the problem becomes one of too much interior space per windowed office.

While the drawbacks of the larger floor plate really have no remedy (interior attorney offices find little acceptance), smaller floors can be considered if certain other options are also available. The best solution is to acquire low-cost space elsewhere in the same building, such as the concourse or a larger, lower floor that provides a greater percentage of interior space. We've been successful with 100% support floors up to 52,000 RSF, and, in fact, concourse-level space of this size is particularly well suited for records and litigation support functions that can share receiving and some management functions.

The reception/conference center suite, too, can readily be located elsewhere within the same building, discontinuous from the attorney floors, without compromising function. Even when these spaces are contiguous with the attorney floors, we plan and design them to be separate for increased security and for improved conference center management issues such as food service, cleaning, and audio/visual technical support. Such a solution will give the leasing strategy even more flexibility.

In addition to disconnecting support space and conference/reception for greater leasing flexibility, other law firm occupancy characteristics have also evolved with the changing nature of law firm practice, and identification of the resulting space type can provide additional leasing opportunities.

While there continues to be some resistance to doubling first- and second-year associates in windowed offices, there is no other occupancy characteristic that is as effective in lowering the space per attorney in relation to the full lease. We aim for an occupancy of 700 to 950 RSF per attorney, depending on the overall firm size (larger firms historically use more square feet per attorney), existing firm culture, and type of practice. The lower number is only achievable for medium size firms and the higher for large firms when using doubled associate offices for some of the younger classes. To achieve this, it is essential to correctly analyze the window and column spacing characteristics of a given building. Doubled offices have approximately the same size desks, just two of them.

Since attorney office fronts tend to line up, additional depth is seldom the issue. What is the issue is mullion spacing. In general, additional width is needed for a double vs. a single to accommodate the relocation of the necessary files that are displaced to create a second knee space under the counter in front of the original, single desk. In this way, law firms are able to gain significant flexibility to accommodate a second attorney per office--full time or on a summer basis--in buildings where the mullion spacing and column dimension allows a periodic addition of 1-1/2 foot in width to the standard associate office dimension.

The time-honored benchmarks should still be applied in researching potential space for a law firm client--they are still attorneys, and they still want offices and doors. But enough has changed to make some previously marginal buildings quite viable choices, and traditionally excellent buildings can be leased at a lower overall rate by the use of less expensive floors.