Legal Services: Thinking outside the box, Central London
What do Vauxhall and Notting Hill have in common? Somewhat surprisingly, they are both now locations for law firm activities. In our view, this is just the beginning of law firms creating new types of space outside of traditional legal sector clusters in order to achieve a broader set of strategic objectives.
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The Central London legal sector has traditionally clustered in either Midtown or the City core. While this is likely to continue for core HQ operations, traditional law firms are waking up to the need to transform before it is too late by setting up alternative spaces to attract and retain talent; drive, nurture or curate innovation and technological advancement; and in some cases to get closer to clients in sectors like TMT.
In April, Allen & Overy announced that they were setting up a “remote hub” in Vauxhall. The purpose of the hub is to offer employees a flexible workspace location which is more easily commutable.
It is specifically designed to attract more women into the workforce by eliminating the need for a longer commute into the centre of London every day.
If successful, the law firm could launch a number of remote hubs around the edges of London. Clearly, Allen & Overy are thinking more forensically about how their real estate supports broader diversity objectives and are prepared to locate somewhere different in order to bolster this important business requirement.
April also saw Barclays launch a new law-tech incubator in Notting Hill in partnership with The Law Society. The venture is backed by a number of major law firms including, Allen & Overy; Clifford Chance; and Baker McKenzie, as well as Legal Geek and leading universities UCL and The University of Liverpool.
Partnering law firms will provide feedback and guidance to help entrepreneurs develop, test and refine their products with, in return, the potential to implement new technology into their firms.
In this sense, the participating law firms are recognising the benefits of partnering with others in external innovation space in alternative locations in order to further their innovation agendas.
Occupational decision making amongst law firms is becoming more much complex as it responds to a number of powerful forces of change that are transforming what lawyers do and how they operate.
These forces include rapid technological advancement, disruptive market entrants, changing talent requirements and shifting client demands.
Successful law firms will implement more sophisticated and nuanced real estate strategies that focus on providing the optimal space in the right – and increasingly surprising or unexpected - locations to achieve a variety of different strategic objectives.
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