Congratulations to Blank Rome for building flexibility into their new 16-year lease for their Philadelphia location, enabling the firm to downsize their square footage by up to 50% to address the hybrid workforce of attorneys and staff working from home.
Since the onset of the pandemic and the seismic shift to remote working strategies of 2020, discussion of real estate reduction has been high on the minds of many law firms leaders. As one of the top expenses faced by firms after compensation, the new distributed workforce gave rise to the possibility of reimagining staffing models in a way that could allow firms to reduce this large expense.
However, it is not only attorney and staff headcount that are part of the equation when it comes to downsizing office real estate. There are myriad back and middle office considerations that must come into play as well: office equipment, output, outsourced staff, records and more must be configured to align with new flexibility models moving forward. Even in the short term, the underutilization of back and middle office support is leaking firms’ revenue.
Flexibility over commitments has long been a cornerstone in all of Mattern’s negotiated outsourcing, equipment (multi-functional and printers) and service contracts. The ability to right-size these commitments are the key to proactively managing these expenses and ultimately, as in the case of Blank Rome, achieve flexibility over real estate.
