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Once upon a time, every lawyer aspired to occupy the prized corner office. But as firms renovate their premises, old values are being challenged
When Chapman Tripp managing partnerAndrew Poole arrives at work in the morning, he doesn’t head for his office. He doesn’t have one. Poole is one of a growing number of senior law firm partners who have embraced the open plan model of office design. When Chapman Tripp refurbished its Auckland and Wellington offices last year, the opportunity was taken to move toward an open plan environment. The Auckland office, previously 90% devoted to individual offices, is now a 50:50 blend of individual and open plan space. And while the sight of the managing partner working away in a cubicle, or “workstation”, may take some getting used to, Poole is comfortable with the decision.
“Our lawyers wanted an environment that encouraged collaboration and greater teamwork while allowing for individual personalities and working styles,” he says. “We now have a mixture of offices and open plan workstations providing both collaborative areas and quiet working spaces. The new fit-outs also allow more natural light to reach internal work areas, and the views can be enjoyed by all.”
Indeed, when ALB visited the new offices, the advantages of the layout were immediately apparent. Gone was the traditional line of offices around the perimeter and in its place, unobstructed views of Auckland harbour and horizons. The result was a light-filled, open environment.
But there’s more to design than just aesthetics. Increasingly, office design is seen as a way of reinforcing a particular organisational culture. It’s a theme that Suzanne Perillo, organisational psychologist at the Schiavello Group, regularly encounters in her design work. “For example, firms are keen to promote communication and social interaction, so we’re seeing more shared workspaces, lower partitions, fewer people in offices – in short, more emphasis on teamwork and less on personal territory,” Perillo says.
Sticking with the original
Of course, the inevitable question is how a lawyer who has previously enjoyed the privacy of his or her own office feels about sitting at an open workstation with nothing but a low partition marking out his or her personal area, accompanied by the buzz of phones, photocopiers and passing traffic. It’s a cultural shift that isn’t going to be popular with everyone.
Russell McVeagh is one example of a firm that considered the options and decided against open plan when renovating its offices. “We strongly believe that the level of concentration required at premier law firms means that having one’s own office contributes strongly to production of quality work,” says CEO Gary McDiarmid. “There is extensive psychological research that has been carried out on this topic noting that the level of interruptions, conscious and subconscious, through being in an open plan environment dramatically reduces concentration and as a result quality and productivity in the workplace. We took into account international trends and came to the overriding conclusion that individual offices were the best option.”
McDiarmid says this conclusion has been borne out by feedback from recruits, the vast majority of whom have a definite preference for offices over open plan. “It’s really a competitive advantage for us to have well-designed individual offices with fantastic views in Auckland’s and Wellington’s premier buildings,” he says.
It is not necessarily a case of choosing one option to the exclusion of the other – there are varying degrees of open plan. “Even if you do have offices, there are more options for using materials like glass which allow the light through,” Perillo says. “So if you’ve got a manager in an office, you’ve still got that visual presence and people are encouraged to interact with the manager. This is an important part of maintaining feedback and collaboration between junior and senior staff.” Indeed, this is the approach taken at Russell McVeagh, where the office fit-out is described by McDiarmid as “open plan with glass”. “We have all the benefits of open plan in terms of visibility and teams close at hand in equal-sized offices, but [we don’t] have the noise and distractions created through a lack of floor-to-ceiling walls,” he says.
Spontaneity and totality
Meeting rooms designed for spontaneity. Sound a bit like psycho-babble? The truth is that knowledge sharing in a modern firm is likely to occur in a more informal context and team breakout spaces can facilitate this interaction. “We find that with our new layout, more informal meetings and coaching sessions occur, and new open plan kitchens are well-used social spaces,” says Poole. “All teams are reporting better collaboration and communication.”
Perillo says that there’s been an evolution in the concept of a team meeting space. “Traditionally, meetings happened in a structured context where the meeting room was a separate, allocated entity which was booked in advance,” she says. “While firms still need to have traditional meeting rooms, we’ve also got the increasing popularity of more informal meeting spaces such as breakout areas where people can have an impromptu session to share knowledge or ideas in real time.”
Although there’s still a need for a formal meeting environment, Poole says that clients also respond well to a more relaxed approach. “In our Auckland office, for example, we now have a cafe and a bar area on the refurbished client floor. The reaction from clients has been overwhelmingly positive – people relax in the bar or cafe and enjoy the view. Many shorter or more informal client meetings end up happening in the cafe area rather than moving into a meeting room,” he says.
When McDiarmid has visitors at the Russell McVeagh offices, he often asks them for their opinion of the premises. It’s a habit born of a firmly held belief that presentation matters. “The space says a lot about a firm,” he notes. “Some have very bland, neutral or tired palettes – we do not. We are not that kind of firm. We certainly wouldn’t want our clients to see us that way.” McDiarmid talks of the Russell McVeagh experience – from the reception area and reception staff to the warmth of the decor and the layout, through to the onsite catering team and access to technology.
While “the experience” has become something of a marketing cliché, there’s no doubt McDiarmid has a point. Judges often speak of an “instinctive synthesis” in legal reasoning. Perhaps the secret to the ideal law firm office is an instinctive synthesis of everything that is encountered there.
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WAYS TO IMPROVE PRIVACY IN OPEN PLAN OFFICES
Switching to open plan doesn’t mean that every conversation you have becomes a free-for-all. There are ways of improving privacy and acoustics including:
· Acoustically absorbent wall panels that absorb rather than reflect sound
· Making private booths available for anyone needing to make a confidential phone call
· “Quiet areas” or pods that can be used by anyone undertaking a task requiring extra concentration
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