#59 Lawyers vs. the Commute Making the Office Worth It, with Emily Botello from CBRE

Hello everyone and welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I am your host, Mary o', Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at Goodwin. Today my guest is Emily Botea. She's Managing Director in America's Consulting at cbre, the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. They are the go to experts for businesses looking to navigate the complex world of property. So whether it's helping companies find the perfect office space, managing their real estate portfolios, valuing properties, or investing in commercial real estate, CBRE does it all. They operate in over 100 countries, serving everything from tech campuses to retail centers to industrial warehouses and investment properties. Think of them as sort of the ultimate matchmakers between businesses and the spaces they need. Combining deep market insights, cutting edge technology, and a global network to transform how companies think about real estate. At cbre, Emily has been revolutionizing how law firms and legal departments in house approach their workplace strategies. As a leader in CBRE's law firm practice Group Executive Committee, she's an expert in helping legal organizations reimagine their real estate footprint. With deep research into how they work, design and occupy space, Emily's become a critical advisor to the legal sector, helping firms and other organizations optimize their workspace to enhance performance, reduce costs and and create environments that support our evolving legal work. Emily has built experience not only in research, but design, strategy, scenario development, change management, move implementation and post occupancy analysis. She brings an excitement and passion for challenging the status quo while also offering empathy and support to those employees as they experience change. With so much talk about the future of work, about flexible workspaces, hybrid work, et cetera, I thought it'd be great to bring someone on the podcast who thinks about this every day and is deeply entrenched in what is happening in the world of real estate, workspace planning and how we work when it comes to the practice of law from AI to M and a change is accelerating. Stay ahead of the curve with exhibit A charts and graphics on the latest legal and market trends that are impacting your business. Visit goodwinlaw.com exhibit A to check out our data driven insights. All right, Emily, welcome.

Thanks. Nice to see you.

Yeah, you too. It's great to have you here today. I have been really excited about this conversation and you know, I sought you out because this is a topic that I feel like people get more heated about than like any other topic I've experienced in all parts of my career. So the legal workspace, both for law firms and corporate legal departments, I think we can all feel is undergoing kind of Significant changes, like everything else in our ecosystem. And a lot of that has been driven by the pandemic's impact on how we work, how we use our office spaces. So many are embracing, like, flexible work arrangements. Others are encouraging this whole return to office. And as a result, I think we've heard teams are reconsidering how much office space they need, how they're using it, reducing their physical footprints from anywhere to like, 20%. We're hearing about shared desking, hoteling systems, a shift from assigned individual offices to shared spaces. I don't think we all know where this is going, but I do think everyone is struggling with kind of how to balance flexibility with fostering, like, collaboration and maintaining productivity and, like, seeing people and preserving that culture. So a lot of things are happening. On top of that, of course, it drives us to ask, what does this mean for, you know, the younger generations who we really think are going to benefit from, in person, mentorship and career development? And sort of like with all this change happening, there are more questions than answers. It feels like a lot of experimentation, a lot of, like, we don't know where the. What the future holds. You're in the thick of it all day. This is what you do all day. I know you specialize in the legal industry, so, Emily, so excited to chat with you. What are you seeing? How do you react to all this?

Well, what you just laid out is exactly what I'm living in every day. In fact, you said so. Well, you'd always have a spot on our team. Welcome to. You've got the narrative down. Those are all of the challenges that we're helping clients to solve for every day. And I think where we don't have perfect answers and there's not a one size fits all for every client or every firm. There are some knowns that are starting to make themselves known. Really. Things like flexibility, being here to stay. That's a big one. Right. We have gotten to a point now, four years past the pandemic, where there are very few firms who have decided to stay 100% remote or 100% in the office. They are all living somewhere in the middle.

Okay.

And I know we'll spend a lot of time talking about what the middle looks like.

Yeah, I'm sure the spectrum as well. Right?

Yes. But I think that notion of, like, flexibility is here to stay is one of our leading points that we've been finding. I think the other piece of it is that there's a recognition that employees are other employees greatest amenity. So food and beverage is not going to be the greatest amenity. Really advanced social programming calendar is not going to be the best amenity. Like people seeing other people is going to be the thing that really works to drive more office utilization.

Yeah, that's what we all miss from the pre pandemic. And you hear a lot of this like, well, we'll have, you know, have popcorn and happy hour and foosball tables. And yeah, I agree with you. That's just like a very weak attempt to try to get people, people in when they want the buzz.

They want it, they want it. I mean, we say a lot. The analogy of going to an empty office is really similar to going to an empty restaurant. You can see a restaurant with great reviews, but if you show up to your reservation and there's no one there, you immediately think, oh no, I've picked the wrong place. Like, even if the food is great, even if the service is great, you kind of wonder, why are the tables next to me not full? What's happening here?

Yeah, why would I just get takeout then? Or you know, you hear, why do you want me to come in and no one's here. I may as well just work from home.

Exactly, exactly.

Great analogy.

And then I think the space standards, the hoteling, I mean, there's a lot to talk about there. So we could kind of go in many different directions as we start here. If we want to talk design or flexibility, you tell me.

Okay, Are you seeing differences in like in house legal departments versus like the law firms? I know they're all lawyers, but it's a little bit of a different animal that we're dealing with. Right. Because you've got one client versus a lot of clients and confidentiality, et cetera, for sure.

For a number of years while I was at CBRE, I actually focused just on CBRE's real estate. So as we had leases expiring, I was doing the, the surveys and visioning sessions and utilization studies of our own people and making recommendations for our space. And so I've got some firsthand knowledge of how we thought about setting up our own, you know, in house counsel team with their office space. And what we saw was there was there was a strong ability to move attorneys within non law firm organization into some of the more progressive standards. We do have neighborhoods for our attorneys, meaning they share a network of spaces. But what we needed to change for them was a higher ratio of private space. So there still needed to be more doors, more reservable enclosed spaces for them to utilize compared to other functions within our company. And that's what we're seeing with a lot of our corporate clients. There's greater willingness as well as a greater push to say we're not just going to kind of carve out for the legal department some based standard that's completely different from the rest of the organization. But we are going to make accommodations to recognize the level of focus work, the level of confidentiality. But often we see too that in house teams are working in a hybrid manner the way everyone is. Right. So they're handling a confidential matter, but they're on a phone call with people in three different cities or states or countries. And so they're also able to do that work more flexibly from home. And we've seen them really adopt to more hybrid working as well.

Yeah, I mean, I worked with your firm when I was at Google managing the legal department there. And we had moved from shared offices to offices to no offices, to no walls, to all the way to hoteling. But of course, there were always, as you said, there were neighborhoods. There were exceptions. When you say neighborhoods, what is, what does that mean?

So typically when we talk about space planning and specifically neighborhoods, it's kind of zones of space within a floor plan that are dedicated to a team or a series of departments. And so rather than say, you know, come to the office, every desk is available to everyone. If there is an unassigned policy, it's always better to down select to a neighborhood so that people know, okay, I've got this network of 20 seats or 50 seats that is meant for my team rather than I'm coming into a state stack of floors and any spaces available.

Right.

So long ago, companies like the big four adopted hoteling, you know, decades ago. And they have really, what you think of as the more true hoteling system where you come in, check in, in a kiosk, get assigned a space. It could be different, you know, every day of the week. Whereas a lot more organizations who are doing unassigned seating today are creating more structure and more of a home base for people with that neighborhood concept.

Yeah, I also liked it because you know, where to find like the litigators are always in like this corner of the floor and then the corporate people are over here. And then when you said you also made accommodations, that's something I'm sure we're all struggling with. What kind of accommodations? How do you make the decisions about like who gets a special assignment or special office or, you know, something different than the norm?

It's typically based on a Level of work style parameters. And that can be different for every client, every firm or corporate organization we work with, there's a few different kind of primary levers. One might be utilization. So if you are coming into the office less than a threshold that is determined by the company, maybe a 15%, 20%, you may opt into a hoteling program purely because that's a threshold that's set and that's kind of a work style that's been identified. Otherwise, exceptions might look like title based exception. It might be deemed that at a certain title threshold, you know, there will be an office or an assignment of space, regardless of things like utilization or confidentiality. Because what we find is if we try to say there's an exception based on confidentiality, a lot of people can raise their hand and say at some point in some, you know, component of their job there is confidential. So the title is an easier one to draw a line at. And then a lot of times exceptions will be made through conversation at the leadership level. They'll say, hey, this has been identified as an exception, a potential exception to the rule. Is there consensus that this would be an exception we'd be willing to approve going forward? And those might range in many varying degrees from things like utilization or degrees of confidentiality to purely, hey, this is a high performing team that has risk of not following policy if they don't have an exception provided to them. So there's a lot of different ways that those exceptions might bubble up for approval.

Yeah, it's going to come down to your organization, your culture, your specifics. And that's why it looks very different from place to place, I imagine.

Yeah, absolutely.

On the attracting folks back to the office. It is a spectrum. You think this is here to stay? This sort of like it's never going to be back to 2019, everyone.

Yeah.

And every single day. And that's the way it works.

Yeah, it is. It's funny to think back to it, right. People didn't used to have the thought run through their mind when their alarm clock went off, like, am I going to the office today from home today? And then all of a sudden that really changed on a dime. We've just recently conducted our annual benchmarking survey, which helps give us a lot of context to what AMLA firms and also boutique or regional firms are thinking about these types of questions. And what we saw was 70% of firms have either encouraged or mandated a policy of at least three days back in the office. And so there's definitely a push in the legal industry. To say we want you here more than less. We're not saying 100% of the time, we're not saying 40, 60, 80 hours a week, but we are saying we want to see you here. And the things that they're doing to help attract people in are some of the low hanging fruit, the food and beverage, the social calendar. They're also taking a tack to say let's meet within practice groups or within departments to determine what are the meeting types or the cadence of team kind of rituals that we determine are must be face to faces. You know, maybe there's a certain type of new client kickoff meeting or new associate integration meeting or weekly departmental review that we must be face to face for. And if we can agree to that, we at least know for those meetings there's always an opportunity that everyone's going to be together. And then we can bolt on other opportunities knowing we'll all be face to face on those days. Because otherwise it becomes very difficult to kind of drive cohesion if on a daily, weekly basis people are just unsure of who is in. So having those kind of anchor moments is really helpful. And then it's interesting in talking to different firms, there's a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 threshold where firms believe, you know, about 30% believe colleagues are utilizing the office about as expected. There's a third who say they're utilizing it less and we're accepting that as okay. And there's about a third who say they're utilizing it less than we'd like. And we're actively working to change that behavior. So it's interesting to see where there's been kind of like a settling that this is just going to be how it is versus a real drive to say we're leaning in and we're trying to change the behavior and we'd still like to see more office use going forward.

What do you think the sentiment is? Do people, like you said, people want to see people, right? Is it better to have days where, you know, everyone's in or to have the flexibility, like, what are you seeing from how do we create the days that you go in and see a bunch of people and I kind of wonder if Fridays are ever going to be back and you know, have be again, right?

As we both sit in an office.

On a Friday morning.

Fridays, I'll tell you, Fridays are like my secret day to get everything done because it's here. They're very productive days for me to be in the office. I do think that it's an interesting dichotomy because oftentimes what you hear from employees is they value flexibility and the mandates to be in uncertain days. There's kind of an aversion too, because, you know, well, what if on that day I'm mandated to be in, my child has an event at school, or the plumber has to come, or any number of the reasons that we used to work from home and work that into our schedule. At the same time, though, what we're seeing through the work that we're advising clients on is you kind of need that first push to say, these are the days we're coming to build up enough momentum for people to recognize the value. And then on the days that are not required, you start to actually see more people because they're like, hey, that Tuesday was so great. Like, what if I came in on a Monday and it was that great and it felt that buzzy? And so I think there is a lean towards saying, we're going to determine some days that are the right days for us to be in. Those typically are the middle of the week. And then firms are hoping that if the middle peaks, you know, they'll start to see some rise on the other ends of the week. Once people recognize how great it feels, that energy is back.

Right, right. And I think the bumping into people in the hallways and having those conversations, the first what, the two minutes before the meeting starts and the two minutes after, they always say those are the most important sidebar conversations. Right. In building relationships.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what people want.

Yeah. Is it the same in the US versus outside the US I'm sure that.

Your time at other firms has allowed you to travel and also see what's been happening across other regions, legal industry, and outside of legal industry. The US definitely lags some of the progressive standards that are happening in EMEA and in APAC as it relates to specifically office design and space utilization. So we do see a lot, especially in major legal markets like the uk, that there's already an adoption of more desk sharing. There's attorneys who are piloting sitting in the open. There's kind of a more advanced view on how the office operates as an entire workplace experience through reserving spaces and highly amenitized hospitality focused spaces. I don't know that we'll see all of those trends come to the US but I think there's a lot to learn from those trends as it relates to ways that we can create more hospitality focused space space, more highly collaborative space. Typically in the US we're only seen in markets Like New York, where there's major space constraints and cost of occupancy is what it is that there's been some trialing of things like attorneys in the open as well as some attorneys sharing offices. Most other markets in the US it's few and far between that we're seeing that level of progressive space use.

Are they still doing three days, four days, five days? Is that different?

Yes, we're seeing outside of the US a major push to be back in the office. And so I think even more so than here, the four day, five day is more the norm than maybe the two day, three day that we've gotten back to.

Yeah, that's kind of been my experience as well. And seeing that the space planning and the design is actually really interesting. I think the, you know, the law firms and even legal departments, like if you look back at the 80s and 90s, were walls, closed door, solid walls, can't see through any sort of glass. I've worked in tech for so long that it's very open. Like food is a big area for tech companies. And yet if you go to older designed law firm, the coffee and the food and the refrigerator is like tucked away in a back room because you don't want to have anyone see that. I think it's so interesting how it's really flipping where there's a lot more transparency when. And I mean like light, you know, light flowing through to the middle part of the offices, like sunlight and glass and then building out of these kind of hubs where you can actually bump into people when you're getting coffee or food and then even hang out and have a small conversation. And collaborative spaces. That is a lot of what you guys are doing seeing. I mean, when you guys are helping to design new spaces and new leases now, what percentage is moving in that direction? I imagine it's very high.

Very high. I laugh when you say transparency, like literal transparency. It's funny, I was touring at a law firm space a few weeks ago that are they've got a lease expiration, they're getting ready to move. They've been in their space since 1990. And so you can imagine the kind of style of that space. And they said it's been a real challenge coming back from the pandemic because people might actually be there. But the way that the space is designed, you know, a door that's closed is a door that's closed. And you walk down the hallway and just have truly no concept of how occupied the office is or not. Which is the real problem in trying to gain back that vibrancy. So in terms of what people are designing to the single size office has far become the norm. There are very few firms who have a lease event coming up who are opting for multiple size offices to remain as part of their standards. The exception being if the design of the floor plate is limiting in some way. And they've got to make exceptions. But the intent is single size mean the flexibility that it affords, the ease of movement when you've got laterals coming in, when you've got promotions, when you've got kind of unknown headcount growth in summer associates, like all of those things, it just makes sense to have a single size. And I think for a lot of partners, that's become easier to stomach, knowing that flexibility is also now a perk that many of them have. Right. They're not spending the same amount of hours in this office that they might have been spending five years ago. And so the idea that the space is a little bit smaller, but it's well fit out with technology, it's well fit out with furniture, it's highly functional. There's not been a big change management issue with the single size office. The glass has been a change management challenge. Right. There's a lot of discussion on do we make it clear, do we frost it, do we add shades? Frost it? How opaque is it, how large is the band? And so that that kind of fishbowl fear and distraction concern, which is valid, has been probably the bigger design challenge than just agreeing on a single size.

Is that more the standard now though, is going to transparent glass and.

Or it is actually very much the style that your office is that I can see here, you know, maintaining a hard door, but having glass front and creating a shade if and where possible. Although certainly shades are an additive cost compared to just the film. Oftentimes what we'll see with law firms is if they go in clear glass, they'll try to say, give us 30, 60, 90 days, unclear glass before we decide if we need to add a film. Like let people become accommodated to it before we determine if we need it. And then if we do need it, let's create a design that is, you know, not so thick that we've basically gone back to. You can't tell who's in there and you can't visually see. Can you be interrupted? Are you on the phone? And give those signals but still give people some kind of lens of distraction. So in, in the office that I'm in, I've got kind of a horizontal banded film, which helps for people to be able to see that I'm in here, but also recognize I'm on a call without being able to actually see my screen. So that's the sweet spot.

Yeah. And conference rooms, I feel like are also moving in that direction where a lot of them are having glass but some ability to make it more private.

That's right.

That's right.

I think the other design features that are kind of lower hanging fruit, like the efficiency of workstations is something that every firm agrees they can move towards. The workstations no longer need to be the 8 by eights, the 8 by 10s of the olden days where every workstation could fit a desktop printer and could have, you know, drawers of file space, but rather they can be like ergonomically suited with sit stand desks for the staff sitting in the open. There's a centralization of printer functions so they don't need to exist within every workstation. And I think the other big question is whether there is some interior associate offices. And I think that one is less, less. Agreed. I think there's a push in some of the amlaw firms to say maybe the 12 year associates can sit interior. And then once we get three, four year and more senior, we try to move to the glass just knowing there's only so much glass that exists. And if we're trying to be efficient with the total space we occupy, we might have to make that concession.

Is anyone kind of deciding mid lease, let's redesign this place because we have it for another 10, 15 years for sure.

There's a number of firms that we're talking to now whose leases aren't expiring until 2028, 2030, who are deciding do we go ahead and renew and extend now purely so that we can redesign. Maybe we can shed some space if we were carrying space or if our standards from, you know, 1990 are, are really throwing us off what our standards are meant to be going forward. Yeah, but the challenge is obviously the, the more ti you get, typically the longer lease term you're signing. And so that that kind of risk reward on the economic side is a big one to be played out. But there are many firms who are looking to go ahead with that renewal and extension now to try to get themselves to today's design standards.

Got it, Got it. Okay. And then you mentioned the smaller. The one size uniform office didn't seem to be a big deal from a change management perspective. The glass is much, somehow a bigger thing to Adapt. All of this comes down to change management. And, you know, I've told the story in the past, even on this podcast. I think that when you're working in operations and transformation, it's all about change management and how you communicate these things. And I actually worked with your firm on some of the real estate change management when I was at Google. We were moving towards more of like a hoteling style, which was a very big deal, and that ended up being successful. But it was a very thoughtful process that I appreciated having consultants on because it was not an approach that I would have spent so much time thinking about if it wasn't for having professionals tell us like, these are the best practices, these are the tips and tricks to make it successful. How would you advise some of us who are in these roles who are trying to think about design standards, cultural standards, flexible workspace? Those are big changes from how it's always been.

They are for sure. And you're right that it can be helpful to have an outside view, because not only might you be aware of what's working well in other places that you could leverage in your process, but also you've got your day job to manage. And so oftentimes these change management programs can really fall to the back burner until you realize, oh, there's a lot of grumbling at the water cooler, or, oh, there's this thing that we need to ask employees to do to prepare, and we've not really given them the notice that they need to do that. And so I think it's always wise when firms consider, do we work with a consultant, a designer, HR specialist to help us through that process. And the challenge too, when you think about real estate related change management, is there can be a really long Runway. I mean, you might be two, three years out from a lease experience expiring when you're having to make decisions about your future space. And two to three years of communication can burn people out. I mean, you, you can't send a message every week or every month about a change that's coming three years down the road and expect people to stay highly engaged in the dialogue. And so a big part of getting that process right is looking end to end at the move date or the renovation date or the swing space date, and going, how can we thoughtfully back into this to engage with people in critical moments and then also let them do their jobs and not stress or carry too much of the concern about this in those gap times? And so that's really a big focus, is getting the timeline Right. And then I think once you've got the timeline, there's key ways that you can engage with people to help drive ownership in the process, to help drive just a feeling of being heard. So we often say, like, not everyone can have a vote, but everyone can have a voice. There's ways that you can survey or allow for FAQ inboxes or offer, you know, coffee open office hours to let people come and ask questions. And in that way, many people feel positively engaged with, even if they didn't get to decide option A or option B directly. And then there's fun ways people can get engaged. I mean, there's the conference room naming, that's always part of the change management process. There's the selection of food and beverage and letting people trial new options. Options. People get very excited about tasting things and giving their commentary. There's the hospitality related elements and asking people, what types of environments have you been in where you felt taken care of, where you felt like your experience mattered? And those ideas that people bring back to you from experiences they've had outside of the office environment are great ways to incorporate a new experience that you might be trying to drive. And then there's also just engaging with some of your naysayers. Like everybody who's been through a real estate project will know who their naysayers are because they make their voices heard and actually sitting down and giving them the forum to express their concerns, to challenge the ideas that are being put forward and to turn that into messaging that can go out to others. Because if one person's thinking it, like 10 people are thinking, it always is really helpful as well.

And what are some, like, best practices, helpful hints to make sure all of us are getting it right? I liked the idea of neighborhoods. Are there other kind of little things that we should be thinking about or that you've seen either go well or go really wrong?

Yeah. One thing that comes to mind that has gone really wrong in the past is you cannot underestimate the power of letting people know when certain types of evaluations are being done. And specifically, I mean anything related to measuring people's utilization. So we had a client in the past, a law firm actually, who opted not to send a communication that they were putting sensors on desks. And sure enough, the first day people found the sensors and said, what is happening? And it was a huge issue. And you can imagine the data was not useful at all because by the end of it, you know, people had taken them off the desks or they had chosen not to come in because they didn't understand what the sensors were measuring. So I would say stay away from doing anything that is, you know, intrusive to employees, first of all, or is something that really shouldn't be a secret. And then I think in terms of other things that are right to do, the concept of neighborhoods has certainly been a very good one. Having somebody within your organization or, you know, whatever organization is going through the change, think from an end to end employee experience. What is my entrance to exit? And have we thought through all of the moments that matter? So when I arrive to this space, how am I being greeted? Do I know where I'm going? Is the wayfinding easy? When I arrive, do I have the tools that I need? Am I situated around the people that I need access to? If I have a problem, do I know who to go to get that answer? Where am I eating? Is it easy to get that food? Is it an enjoyable place to be? Like, literally mapping out what that experience looks like really helps firms to find any missing gaps that haven't been thought of throughout the process because there's so much that goes into it. There's the design, the furniture, the technology, the amenities, the experience. And oftentimes lots of different teams are in charge of lots of different components. So one person kind of looking in to say, did we make sure there's no gaps in that entrance to exit is really helpful in that change process.

Yeah, the technology piece is one we haven't touched on. And where I am now, you know, is very happy to find out that everyone has the same type of issued laptop and everyone's got the same monitors across the world and all the spaces you can go anywhere and plug in. In the past, I've worked in place like Google. We had Chromebooks, MacBooks and PCs. Anyone could, you know, use whatever they wanted. Some people had one monitor, two monitors, vertical monitors, and it was a nightmare making sure that every, you know, one could get to the setup that they needed easily. And then the training on how to plug in was different hooks and all the, you know, the dongles that you'd have to make to get the monitors to work, even like assigning desks and stuff. What are your thoughts on how to get the tech right? That's probably, I imagine, a lot of friction if you're trying to make things work. And like, that's a very painful process if you can't get started on your work and you came into the office.

Oh, for sure. And for unassigned seating, I'll say that's One of the biggest concerns employees have in moving that direction is the fear of lack of ability to get up and running and having to spend that time every day or every time they move. Thinking more specifically towards law firms where there's less unassigned seating but some still more consistent technology, that still can be an issue. And certainly people even in an assigned space might be moving between conference rooms and in an office or workstation. And so what we're seeing is consistency is key. So having the same setup in all of the workspaces, what you'll see typically nowadays I'm sure is very similar to what you've got is, you know, you've got an ultra wide or dual monitors and a quick USB or, or USB C dongle that plugs in, it gives you battery and it gives you connection to your peripherals. That's certainly the way of any new build. And then in conference rooms, what we're seeing is the easier the plug and play can be, the more adoption you'll have. So as soon as I hear a law firm say every time I go into a conference room I have to call the IT person, I think, oh no, you do not have a simple enough solution. Because we should not have to call it every time we go to a huddle room with two people and you want to share a screen. Certainly if you're going to a big client presentation needs to be perfect. Absolutely. Leverage your IT department. But for those quick what should be independent actions, we need it to be more simple. So there's a lot of different tools out there that can allow for that. But I'd say in kind of the AB process of a renovation or relocation, that you need to bring it to the table to make sure that they're getting input on that. I think as well as it pertains to technology, the ability to kind of strike a balance between people acting independently and requiring help, whether it's reserving a conference room indicating that you need food and beverage for a meeting, there's oftentimes kind of fine line between we need to provide a white glove service. But also sometimes it's just easier if people can click a button and do it themselves than have to go through a whole list of items. So what we're seeing in a lot of our firms is that there's certainly the centralized client facing collaboration center where it's highly regulated through an operations or workplace experience team and everything you need in that space, you know, is handled by that group. But then within practice floors, attorneys are telling us it's nice if I can just reserve a room myself, go to it, plug in and be up and running. And so thinking about an easy reservation system system to do that that people don't need an additional level of support for is really nice.

Yeah. So there's a huge level of investment that is needed to kind of modernize and transform the way we all work together. Are you seeing that investment be a priority for both legal departments and firms right now?

For sure. I think the IT spend has gone up considerably and will continue to be a high dollar amount in any kind of construction budget or just even an ongoing budget as technology outpaces real estate. Right. Like lease terms. We talked about being 10 years. Technology is changing at a much more rapid pace. So needing to set aside dollars every year, every other year for those tech investments is very real. I didn't mention too, but I think it's worth noting, you know, in the idea of bringing people back to the office and recognizing what their experience is in an office versus home. Many people have set up home offices to be exactly as they'd like. Right. They've brought, they've bought a monitor, they've bought an external camera, they've got their docking station, they probably got themselves a nice task chair, maybe a sit stand desk. And at home, no one ever adjusts those settings. You know, nothing is ever changing. You're not moving from a conference room to your home office typically, I would think, unless you've built a conference room in your home office. And so it's very easy to work your tech at home. And that's where as soon as you hit a point of frustration in the office, it's easy for people to fall back and say, well, this doesn't happen at home. So working at home is easier. And so that puts even more pressure on the IT team, the workplace and facilities team, to really make sure that in office experience is seamless.

Absolutely. And you know, the technology is another interesting thing because it's actually made it so easy for two people to look at a screen and see each other and meet such that even if you were in the same location as me, but maybe a floor down or floor up and we were having a one on one, we might just hop on a zoom call. Right. And do this from our offices. Instead of what I been trying to remember, before the pandemic, didn't we all just meet in a conference room together and spend a lot of time running around getting our steps in? Right. With our laptops running around from floor to floor trying to make it from one meeting to another, I've been wondering is I, are we going to get back to that? Are you seeing that? I guess even in your own experience, in your own company, are people going to get back to going face to face when they're in the same location?

I think so. I think what we're starting to see, I mentioned earlier the concept of practice groups or teams deciding, hey, this is an important meeting to be face to face for. It's always going to be face to face. What I'm seeing within my own organization and hearing from clients is that those meetings are starting to be, you know, non hybrid accessible. Meaning like they're not adding a zoom link or a teams link to that meeting because they've determined that's an in person meeting. And if there's an exception and an important stakeholder is traveling that day and needs a zoom link, maybe they'll add it, but they're going in. Hypothesis is you're here, therefore we're not including the option for you to come virtual. And I think sometimes it takes that level of effort to say this is how important we feel this is. If you're not here, you're missing this dialogue. You don't have the option to hear it from home. And then I've also seen, and this is an interesting kind of behavioral change that could fall into that change management bucket is adjusting meetings so that they're 45 or 50 minutes that you're giving people that tail end window to say, I need to use the facilities, I need to fill up my water, I need to move between floors to get from my next meeting or to get back to my office, which is a very real thing because we've all seen in the last four years and some of us, I'm, I'm sure you're similar. Even before the pandemic, my calendar was chaos. But you're back to back. And so it, it is sometimes not that you don't want to go meet with someone in person, just that you know you're going to miss the first two minutes if you actually try to move and get there. So just those little changes in meeting behaviors can help to support the in person nature.

Yeah, everywhere that I can remember that I've worked for the last, I don't know, couple decades has defaulted all like calendars to 55 minutes or 25 minute meetings. And we were extremely militant about starting on time and ending on time. Like if you were mid sentence and it was 1255, got to go. Sorry guys, we got to go. Everyone's off. Not all places have that culture, and that makes it very hard. You're always running late and, like, I feel like I never have time to run to the bathroom. I mean, so I love the idea of bringing everyone together for an important meeting in person, and if you're not there, you're going to miss out. And like I said, the two minutes before and after are always like the best parts of those meetings. But the reality is most of us are global organizations now, and you have people in other offices that you're going to have in those meetings. The challenge we had even before Pandemic was, how do you make people feel like they're part of the conversation and able to easily jump in when they're in the minority, either in person, because there's two of you in a conference room and everyone else is on, or vice versa, where most of you are together in person, but like one person's on video. How do we think about making that feel like a seamless meeting, that everyone can see each other, hear each other, know, you know, have that really easy way of jumping in, reading the room, et cetera?

Sure, as you know, it's an imperfect challenge to solve for, or rather there's not a perfect solution for the challenge. But I think a few things that we've seen is that tech investment to make sure that the experience feels is imperative. And I'm sure you've been on plenty of meetings like this where it's easier if everyone's on their own, own camera, on their own laptop, to feel like you're all in a level playing field than to have 10 people in a room and two on camera. And so there's the kind of constant ask, like, do we meet in a group if some of us are local, or do we take it all in a hybrid setting? And I think that's dependent upon the meeting. You know, if a majority being in person is going to help run a more successful meeting, then I would say do that if everyone is an equal stakeholder and it's better to just. Just purely be all independent, then show up on your independent Brady Bunch squares. But tech in conference rooms has also, you know, vastly improved. So there's a number of solutions that allow you to share a presenter screen, to have people see the room, to have people see a podium, so you've got kind of three views to feel like you're really immersed in that experience. And I think it. It has become the responsibility of the person who is not local or who is not in the room to show their engagement by having their camera on, by coming off mute, by making sure that they're voicing their input. And then I've seen some creative solutions again around behaviors where if there's a discussion that say you're opening up for feedback, you know, whoever's facilitating the meeting always starts with the person who's remote or virtual first. So that you make sure that you've got the opportunity to hear their voice before the room starts their dialogue. Because we know once that dialogue starts, it's very hard to raise your hand as the person and kind of butt in.

Yeah, I've seen the use of these things called 360 cameras, which I'm looking into here for larger conference rooms. What it does is it creates a single box per head, you know, per person in the room. And so even if you are not speaking and you're in the room, you, you've got to show up, right, like as if you're on your own laptop. And the nice thing about that is you can see people's faces, you can see their reactions, even their non verbal communications in the room, and pick up a little bit more of the sentiment and the tone of that meeting without being in that room.

I think it's funny too to think back prior to using teams or Zoom or Google Meets or anything that it was, I mean, we, you and I both work in global organizations and we used to just dial into a conference line and like, you know, 10, 20, 30 people, you just hear a bunch of beeps joining and you'd be like, Mary, is that you? Do you have any input on this? And you'd have, I wouldn't be able to see your face. I wouldn't be able to see if you were paying attention or laughing or frowning. And so we always used to meet in this way and I think sometimes people focus so much on the last four years and how much has changed. But like this has been a journey long before the pandemic to think about how to run a good hybrid meeting. And it's lucky that we've got the ability now to see each other. And I think we'll just continue to fine tune how much more we can see each other and how we can continue to improve that space.

Absolutely, absolutely. As we kind of wrap up here, Emily, any predictions or themes that you see happening in 2025 that are different or a lot more the same, like where do you see this next year going?

So I think there's a couple of things that come to mind for the legal industry so specifically I think one is as it relates to how the legal industry might adopt some things that are already prevalent in the corporate world. This idea of better managing space data is one that, that the industry has been a bit behind on. And what I mean by that is it's common that law firms will operate their space data via Excel worksheet and PDF floor plans. So when they've got new hires or moves, ads, changes, or they're renovating a portion of the plan, like they're operating off of a very traditional method of kind of space occupancy measurements. And there's a lot of amazing systems out there that manage that in a much more digital way that allow it to be more seamless, to show movement of people and to run different occupancy scenarios. So I think that will be something that we'll see start to come into effect more in the legal industry. It's just better space data management.

Emily I used to print out these giant pieces of paper that we would tape on the wall and then have post its to move bodies.

And many firms are still doing that. Kind of breaks your mind. I also think it will be interesting to see how firms continue to commit to ESG related goals. So if they're publishing public Net zero pledges, if they're working on their carbon roadmaps, I think this is a space that many law firms are still trying to figure out how they're going to set these targets and how they're going to move towards them. That will be one that we'll watch for sure. And then I think this continued notion of just like, how do we measure whether or not this degree of flexibility is right for our firm will be one that is not going to go away. So we kind of started the discussion saying flexibility is here to stay, but also that there's a wide spectrum of what is the right level of flexibility for firms. So I think over the coming years, as firms relocate, renovate, grow in certain cities, it will be really interesting to watch how that notion of what's the right flexibility for us continues to evolve.

So we're going to be flexible about how flexible things are, which I think is right. I mean, so much is uncertain that hopefully there's a willingness to experiment and say, oh, that didn't really work, so we're going to change it. And I'm hoping that everyone allows us to make some mistakes as we figure it all out.

That's right.

Great, Emily. This was really interesting, fascinating. I'm sure people will really enjoy hearing your perspective. So thanks so much for your time today.

Absolutely. Great to talk with you. Thanks, Mary.