The legal industry is in the midst of tremendous changes that will inevitably have a profound impact on the way attorneys approach their business. In the wake of these changes, law firms are being challenged to control rising expenses, improve client services and responsiveness, boost efficiency and infuse technological support to improve overall return. New trends in space planning, document technology, data security and the services offered will all redefine how law offices practice, that they meet the ever-changing needs of their client base, and how they strategically position themselves competitively.
Gaining a Competitive Edge
While much has changed about law, law office design and technology, the challenge to have a competitive edge remains of primary interest to law practices. Taking the necessary steps to ensure survival in this ever-changing industry will prevail as the legal sector is remodeled. Embracing technological advances in document management, storage and retrieval; revolutionizing the standard office space to allow more mobility, agility and flexibility; and opening our eyes for you to some broad spectrum of external services will all become key success factors.
In web-sites survey of your 1200 largest U.S. law firms, 98% of attorneys agreed that telecommuting boost over the other 10 extended. How will your law firm effectively match the objectives required to help company is thrive in this particular competitive market without compromising core market? How will you implement and balance these changes to increase profitability and gain an aggressive edge?
The process begins by developing some sort of understanding of what the key Law Trends are and how these trends can shape the way your business operates and, ultimately, they will get a new bottom set.
How Will The Trends Shape Approach Your Business Operates?
Building Selection and Design: Traditional high-rent law space is giving way to more streamlined real estate holdings as large firms consolidate operations and with regard to functional, simplified space. While impressive workspace still prevails, having an expensive, high-profile property won’ longer make good business sense. Help in the building selection, more law practices are choosing the expertise a good unbiased, tenant-only real estate broker help them inside building buying process. Architects put the leasing team at the outset of the process assist law firms in developing specific space requirements by analyzing the cultural and functional facets of the establishment. Many firms are opting for sustainable design as this initiative reaches main flow. The long-term goal: to produce a space that meets functional requirements and positively reflects business.
TRENDS Take a look at – Real estate Opulent, high-rent real estate for law practices are shifting to smaller, more attractive office spaces. Trends indicate more and more attorneys are utilizing their work place as a power tool to support staff, enhance services, may create a workspace that promotes flexibility, collaboration and technology advancement.
Office Space and Size: While the influence of defining status and communicating brand visibility remains important in the legal sector, practice trends indicate that property and allocation within the practice are changing dramatically. With many law practices in order to reduce overhead, spatial reduction has become one of this single significant means of streamlining business expenses. Within the office itself, shared offices for retired partners, universal workstations, consolidation of conference spaces and reduction in law library space are at the forefront of adjustment. War rooms or, essentially, central group spaces for attorneys working on case trials, are becoming the norm allowing a cost-effective way to support teams in an environment that supports collaboration. Commuter offices with connections for computers and telephones are offering to you flexible convenience aimed at providing a reserved space for visiting attorneys or retired associates.
Space as a Tool – Sensible, Simple and Sophisticated Law offices of the future much more expensive diverse prior to now. Space doesn’t always equate to status weight loss law firms are scaling down reduce overhead and viewing space as a machine to help them run their business more efficiently. More offices are opting for healthier, sustainable environments, more relaxed, communal surroundings with better services and, certainly, more mobility to facilitate meetings from virtually anywhere inside or out belonging to the office. Office space and the profound affect it get on the overall productivity of the office are driving then a change in how practices see the profile of that space.
Three factors to be regarded when determining space requirements: Simple – Consider the way your office operates, the proximity of work space to key amenities, support clusters and teaming settings. Efficiency within the office will enhance greatly if you do consider method of and create spaces that accommodate associated with them.
Functional – Furniture plays a key role your market functionality of your office. Successful furniture selection and placement can prove extremely beneficial allowing for the reduction of total office square footage as well as creating more prime living area. In addition, consolidation of conference spaces, clustering meeting spaces and shifting traditional book storage to research zones get a a vast impact regarding how your business operates.
Effective — Office space must have agility operate effectively permitting you and your employees to quickly respond to changing has. New offices must meet current demands allow the necessary foundation for future growth and technological advancement.
Document Management: Paperless Office – Myth or Matter? Since the inception of desktop computers paperless offices tend to be a dream of most businesses. Most law practices question whether this goal of a paperless office is truly attainable. The truth is, paper is a necessary, major factor of how law offices practice and, to this day, a good portion of day-to-day work is still paper-based. However, there isn’t any hope. Technological advancements are driving offices toward a paperless, or, at probably the most beneficial least, paper common law library reduced workspace.
Through advanced technology, attorneys have options to assist them in record management (RM), the associated with identifying, organizing, maintaining and accessing all the records that are created and received coming from the organization during its day-to-day operations. New options have a myriad of choices to convert paper documents into searchable digital archives including digital scanners, document management, document storage and outsourcing.
However, so transition to be able to paperless, or paper reduced office, can be a daunting part of most law practices. Many question in order to begin, what technology to adopt, the affect these changes could have on their bottom line.
Creating an environment where attorneys partner with technology specialists to tailor their needs will become key success factor. As advances are adopted, electronic workflow processes, document retrieval systems and data security will as the norm. Knowledge management will be a critical success factor as clients demand much more expect shell out less.
While many firms are reluctant to take advantage of them advances being a result of security challenges; the future will be driven by firms who embrace technology as one way to improve process and efficiency.