Design Matters
First, let me acknowledge that I have an agenda. As a designer focusing on workplace, I have a vested interest in encouraging people to go back to work. All of us in the commercial real estate industry need for the office to be an important, relevant destination. So my opinion is a bit skewed.
That doesn’t mean that I believe that the office shouldn’t change. It should. It must. And that’s why I found the data presented in JLL’s recent Midwest Law Fim Office Benchmarking Study so interesting. The data and analysis gathered from 40+ prominent law firms in the region presents an interesting set of motivations and priorities around the design of the legal workplace that should help to inform future work in this sector.
Beyond the space allocations presented in the report, as well as a deep dive into hybrid work as it relates to law firm practices, the JLL document explains four experiential trends that will drive the design of law firms in the future:
1. Attorneys want to feel like they are part of something bigger.
2. Attorneys want the firm they work for to reflect agility.
3. Attorneys want the opportunity to work on the cutting edge of the legal profession, where technology meets the law.
4. Attorneys want the opportunity to be partially remote and still excel within their firm despite lower rates of in-office face time.
The report mostly recommends different amenities and policies to help law firms achieve these trends. But I believe that there are bigger implications for design in these trends. For example, when attorneys say they want to feel like they’re part of something bigger, that’s a design challenge. How do we make the office feel like a community worth belonging to? When attorneys say they want their firms to reflect agility, that’s also a design challenge. How can a design solution be flexible enough to not only anticipate change but to encourage constant evolution?
The bottom line is that it’s not just about amenities and policies. Amenities and policies are undoubtedly important. But design matters, and it must be thoughtfully considered when encouraging people to return to the office. The office is, after all, for people, and people should feel supported not only by policies and amenities but also by the design of the workplace itself.