The Impact of COVID

Productivity

The first question a firm must answer is whether productivity has remained constant, increased, or decreased while their personnel work from home. It is important to note that, while billable hours may have risen during the pandemic when there were not a lot of alternative ways to pass the time, this may be a false comparison. A firm might find that, with a return to normal and a more full work-life balance, equal or increased productivity might be lost if employees are permitted to work from home.

Meeting Clients

Lawyers will continue to have to meet with clients. Due to the often private and/or complex nature of client matters, it is unlikely that these interactions will continue to happen by teleconference. Clients, especially during a first meeting, expect a professional and often impressive office space, and may be put off if they cannot meet their lawyer in person. Additionally, law firms that serve the general public (as opposed to businesses) will want to have a location near their client base, but also convenient to major transit, court facilities, and professional services. Home offices will rarely suit this purpose.

Mentorship

A number of our clients have told us that it takes a village to create a lawyer. Indeed, all lawyers begin their careers with a defined period of mentorship, their Articles, but mentoring should continue throughout a lawyer's career. The quality of a firm's mentorship program cannot be understated, as lack of mentorship is one of the top three reasons cited by junior lawyers for leaving their job. In the short term, adequate mentorship helps to ensure that the firm will continue to produce high quality legal products. In the long term, mentorship is essential to employee retention. It can be very difficult for younger lawyers to seek out the mentorship they need, and doubly so when physical proximity to senior counsel is lost.

Collaboration

Legal work can be divided into two broad categories: head down solo legal work and work that requires collaboration. Working from home may appeal to a lawyer when the task is reading file material or preparing a discovery report — why drive to an office to sit at a desk when one can do that at home and save the commute? However, a large part of the work on a file is collaborative, both between lawyers and between lawyers and their staff. Like mentorship, collaboration requires proximity, and many of our clients have expressed that — even with modern technologies — they miss the ability to get quick insights from a lawyer next door or check in with a staff member sitting outside their office.

Strategies to Reduce Existing Office Space

Many firms will refocus on the cost of their premises, but decide that drastic action is not possible (perhaps their lease extends for some time into the future). There are still measures a firm can take to make their space more efficient (i.e. capable of accommodating more staff and lawyers in the same space), or to prepare to move to less space when the lease ends.

• File Storage and Digitisation

  The elimination of physical files can save firms a tremendous amount of space. Not having to store paper can free up entire rooms and reduce the necessary footprint for each employee. With a paperless office, there are even further opportunities to reduce space dedicated to equipment, like mailrooms and fax machines.

• Staff Ratios

  Reducing the number of support staff per lawyer also allows a firm to reduce their office needs. The rise of specialised legal software that automates recurring tasks, better and more centralised file organisation, and a trend toward specialisation and realising economies of scale among support staff has allowed firms to manage the same number of files with fewer employees, thus saving space.

• Office Sizes

  Law firms have also tended toward smaller office spaces for lawyers in recent decades. This was obviously a trend well before COVID-19 and is likely related to the increased cost of real estate in major cities in Canada. The standard now is 200 sq. ft. for partners and 120 sq. ft. for associates, whereas offices might have been three times that size previously.

Should a law firm decide that saving costs related to office space is where they would like to focus their efforts, but also decide that they do not wish to enact significant changes, the above efforts can lead to a slow reduction in office space over time.

Co-locating Office Space

A relatively new idea for law firms (and one we will discuss in an upcoming blog post), co-locating office space means opening a second location for your firm. The primary location would likely be in the downtown core or your primary area and would comprise meeting facilities, some lawyer offices, and client amenities. These offices might cost between $40-100 sq. ft. The second office would be located in a much less expensive part of the city, potentially even a suburb where a larger proportion of the firm's staff actually live. They would comprise support workspace, server and technical rooms, and staff amenities. Such offices often cost $8-15/sq. ft. They can be popular with staff, as they can shorten commutes and offer more space and amenities like free parking. They can also provide support to lawyers in nearby court jurisdictions, and a satellite office for meetings with clients who do not wish to travel downtown.

By taking an office that was previously entirely rented at $50 sq. ft. and splitting it equally between $50 and $15/sq. ft., a firm can reduce their lease costs by 35% while achieving all sorts of advantages.

Downsizing Office Space

Finally, a firm may decide that some of the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic will remain after it is gone. Lawyers and support staff may wish to continue working from home where possible, and this would permit a firm to reduce their office space to the extent it is not being fully used.

Some of our clients who happen to have their lease come to an end have taken this approach, with a few going so far as to reduce their leased space by over 50%. This strategy depends on four essential factors:

• Providing excellent technological options and support to lawyers and staff, giving them the fullest opportunity to recreate all of the advantages of the office as best as possible while at home.
• Measuring productivity effectively to ensure that the firm is not losing out on billable hours or suffering a reduction in quality of work due to less oversight.
• Ensuring strong retention by offering staff (particularly lawyers) choices in how they navigate the change. For instance, a firm might offer a slight increase in salary or flexibility in exchange for working from home, or might require a promise to attend the office full time in exchange for a private office.
• Reconfiguring the office to prioritise collaborative and mentoring spaces, and keeping such elements of the office as are vital to client relationships.