The legal market has long operated in a culture of hierarchical organization, placing top emphasis on tangible distinctions among firm partners, associates, paralegals and support staff. But this industry continues to strive to keep up with modern company culture practices and office design concepts, and law firms around the country are indeed beginning to detangle themselves from hierarchy-based design concepts.
Law firm Akerman recently moved into its new Miami offices at Three Brickell City Centre, designed by Gensler. The new offices introduce a significant step forward in office design within the legal industry, in Miami and on a national level, with a perfectly balanced Miami-modern aesthetic and a series of flexible collaboration spaces that will help Akerman streamline its work.
After an initial discovery and research phase, Akerman and Gensler identified four key themes Akerman wanted its new Miami digs to signify:
>Forward-thinking: employing the latest design best practices and integrating the latest technolgy
>Collaborative: contributing to the firm’s culture of collaborative innovation and ongoing R&D
>Flexible: using adaptable space to support the ever-changing needs of clients
>Efficient: contributing to the performance and intensity of our professionals
“Gensler does a lot of law firm work, and I think they were looking to us to push them into a space that they could live and grow in,” said Ed Wood, design director and principal at Gensler, New York office. “They wanted us to be very progressive.”
Gensler kicked off its progressive design plan by proposing uniformly sized offices for both partners and associates – a big ask for any law firm accustomed to large-scale partner offices on the perimeter of a floor plate. Akerman opted-in to the change, along with several other shared, collaborative-based design concepts new to them, including war rooms, a pantry/coffee bar with a bar-stool setting on each floor, and tech-heavy rooms that would replace the standard “case rooms” with boxes of case materials lining the walls. A multipurpose room with movable walls can function as auditorium, mock trial area, dinning center, or training space.
Each floor also features an “Office Commons” – a shared space specially designated for visiting lawyers travelling from other Akerman offices, interns, or teams of lawyers collaborating on a case. With each Office Commons space, Akerman intends to provide an opportunity for its employees to make new connections and collaborate in a way it didn’t before.
Gensler fitted all individual workspaces and private offices with Knoll workstations that cut down on cabinetry. And in contrast to the stately leather chairs of many law firm offices, Akerman chose the light, mesh-backed Knoll Generation chairs for all employees.
The new office is home to one of the largest private conference centers in Miami, with capacity to host meetings for up to 300 people, featuring the latest conferencing tech and retractable wall systems for easy reconfiguration.
Gensler carefully laid out a floor plan promoting transparency through the middle of the building and maximizing natural daylighting and exterior views. In developing the conferencing center, Gensler created a “conceptual porch” design, placing conference rooms on the interior and lining them with glass and a large walkway perimeter.
“It was important to see through the building,” said Mr. Wood. “Wherever you are in the space, you have a vista of natural light.”
Akerman is home to one of the largest private conference centers in Miami, with capacity to host meetings for up to 300 people, featuring the latest conferencing tech and retractable wall systems for easy reconfiguration.Natural light played a central role in the transparent, open aesthetic Akerman wanted to achieve. In choosing a color palette, materials and furniture pieces, Gensler took inspiration from Akerman’s collection of photography that captures the water, sand, light and botanical aspects of Miami, but manifested in an understated way. The new offices are light-filled, airy and luxurious.
“We wanted to connect to the beach quality of Miami without being kitschy,” said Mr. Wood. “It has a strong sense of regional quality to it.”
Guests and employees leave the urban exterior of Miami behind and enter the Akerman offices by way of an impressive double height reception with a stunning cascading light sculpture, in which hundreds of lights sway whimsically from the ceiling.
But perhaps the most inspiring new space in the Akerman offices is the Akerman Café. Located on the corner of the building’s top floor, the Café is a shared amenity space open to all employees with fantastic views. Divided into two rooms, the space captures Gensler’s thoughtfully crafted water and beach aesthetic.
Assorted Knoll benches and chairs, lounge chairs by Ligne Roset, and Wishbone Chairs by Hans Wegner rest beneath light fixtures by Tom Dixon. In a room with two full window walls, a stunning 24-foot-long live-edge ash wood table offers a sense of community for employees who would otherwise eat lunch at their desks. As an added amenity, Akerman serves breakfast to all employees each Friday.
In addition to being pre-certified LEED Gold, and one of 14 buildings in the U.S. where Akerman has offices that are LEED or Energy Star certified, the Brickell City Centre building also has a few great real estate talking points. It’s the only office building in the Brickell area with a Metromover – a free mass transit automated people mover train system – attached to its structure, offering employees super easy commutes to and from the office, and to various parts of the city during the day to visit the courthouse and clients.
The building also sits in a complex that is home to the “Climate Ribbon™,” a 150,000 square foot elevated trellis connecting all areas of the complex and creating a comfortable microclimate for shoppers through the use of passive energy devices. According to Swire Properties, which developed it, “The Climate Ribbon™ serves multiple purposes: acting as a shade for the project’s walkways, shops, restaurants, escalators and terraces to protect visitors from rain and sunlight, creating air flow to optimize temperatures and collecting rainwater for reuse, all while allowing Brickell CityCentre shopping to be open air and naturally lit.”
The new Miami offices offer Akerman the ability to accommodate immediate headcount growth by as much as 10%, achieved as the result of reimagining how each type of Akerman employee use their workspaces. And Akerman intends to use its new Miami office as a model for other core markets, including New York and Chicago, which is more than doubling its physical footprint in less than two years of the office opening.
“The changing law business has an insatiable need for new ideas, and we saw this project as an opportunity to reimagine not only where we work, but how we work,” said Andrew Smulian, Akerman chairman and CEO, in a press announcement by Akerman. “We turned concepts such as collaboration and transparency into convention, and created a working environment that is forward-thinking and efficient.”