Build a Healthy Law Office

Specialized support for law firm clients; we know the challenges and the opportunities

I litigated construction and insurance coverage matters before launching Sustainable Strategies; I know first-hand the challenges and stressors faced by lawyers. Thankfully, the number of support services available to help lawyers manage these stressors are steadily increasing. However, these stressors are exacerbated by office spaces that do not support health and wellness: bright, flickering lights; very cold temperatures; poor acoustics; nowhere to go if you need a few minutes of privacy; gendered restrooms that simply don’t work for many users.

The impact of office design is often overlooked, yet there are many health and wellness strategies that can be delivered directly through the physical office space.

Does your Office Space Reflect Your Values

Support policies with better design

Firms are increasingly instituting policies and programs that support attorney health and wellness - and these are very important. But office design also has an important role in supporting, and getting the maximum benefit of, these policies. For example, if your firm develops and institutes a policy that provides for wellness breaks, but your office space does not have a room (or enough room) for folks to actually take a quiet, private break, your policy is useless. Similarly, if you have a diversity statement and initiatives - but your office does not actually welcome diverse lawyers, staff and clients, by, for example, providing inclusive restrooms; or lighting, acoustics and way-finding that support a neurodiverse workforce - that policy is meaningless (more on all of these aspects below).

Additionally, when these support services are delivered through the physical building, they (1) benefit everyone who moves through the space and (2) do not require users to disclose personal information in order to obtain the benefits. Unlike “traditional” corporate wellness programs - such as providing employees with an activity tracker - employees also do not have to “opt in” to receive the benefits of things like improved air quality; they also do not have to disclose personal information in order to safely use the restroom or to obtain the benefits of interior design strategies that support neurodiversity.

What are the challenges?

And how are they unique to lawyers and law firms

Lawyer wellbeing was arguably brought to the forefront when the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing issued its key report: The Path to Lawyer Well-Being, creating a movement to improve well-being in the legal profession. Highlights from this report include:

“For law firms and corporations, lawyer health is an important form of human capital that can provide a competitive advantage. For example, job satisfaction predicts retention and performance.”

“Gallup Corporation has done years of research showing that worker well-being in the form of engagement is linked to a host of organizational success factors, including lower turnover, high client satisfaction, and higher productivity and profitability. The Gallup research also shows that few organizations fully benefit from their human capital because most employees (68 percent) are not engaged. Reducing turnover is especially important for law firms, where turnover rates can be high."

Office design has significant impacts on occupant health and wellbeing - and the research is only increasing.

What are the opportunities?

Everyone deserves the right to a space that allows them to do their best work

Pre-pandemic, Americans spent an average of 90% of their time indoors (and one-half to one-third of their waking hours in office spaces), where the levels of common pollutants can be two to five times higher than outdoors. As explained below, these pollutants have significant impacts on our health and performance, yet - to our detriment - we put very little thought into the spaces where we spend so much of our time. Law offices are no exception.

The positive impacts of improved air quality

For law firms, the most valuable asset is attorney time; time spent focused on the task at hand. Law firm leaders should pay close attention to air quality as the latest research demonstrates how improved air quality translates to quantifiable cognitive benefits. One commonly cited study is known as the COGfx study. You can read the full study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, here. As a summary, when compared to a “traditional” office spaces, there were two key findings relevant to law firms:

1. When researchers reduced the levels of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) one of the most common indoor pollutants, cognitive scores increased by 61%.

2. When the VOC levels were reduced, and ventilation rates increased (i.e. more fresh air was brought in), these scores increased by 101%.

What’s even more important is that the largest increases in cognitive scores were in the following areas: crisis response, information usage and strategy. This research was subsequently expanded to a larger building set and broader geographic reach (6 countries, 42 buildings, 30 cities, 302 participants, one year time period), with similar results. As one of the researchers noted:

“Our research consistently finds that the value proposition of these strategies extends to cognitive function and productivity of workers, making healthy buildings foundational to public health and business strategy moving forward.”

For law firms, who rely on their lawyers to perform their best and provide solid advice to their clients, it’s also a risk management strategy. And air quality is just one healthy building strategy.

Conversations around thermal comfort

There is also a growing body of research that demonstrates there is a very narrow range of temperature that supports optimal human performance. As noted by the authors of the book, Healthy Buildings, how indoor spaces drive performance and productivity:

“Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found a 10 percent relative reduction in performance when the temperature fell out of this narrow optimal range.”

There are humidity and other reasons why the air in commercial spaces sometimes needs to be kept at a certain temperature, but completely ignoring or brushing off valid comfort concerns has real performance impacts to any business.

Moreover, these aspects disproportionately impact the performance of certain building users — particularly women. This is because the thermal comfort “standards,” which govern facility operations in most commercial spaces, are based on the clothing choices and metabolic rates of men in the 1960s (picture the clothing worn by the cast of Mad Men). Yet the metabolic rate of women can be up to 32% lower. If you want an entertaining read on this topic, check out this article from The New Yorker, “Is Your Thermostat Sexist.” The answer? Yes, it is.

Failing to adjust environmental conditions to support all building users, or provide tools such as personal fans and heaters, has significant and disproportionate impacts.

Restrooms and support for a neurodiverse workforce

Air quality and thermal comfort are just two examples of how better office design can have significant impacts on health and wellness. There are many other examples, including the physical harm associated with binary gendered restrooms (read more about the importance of inclusive restroom design, here; and data on the increasing number of LGBTQ+ and non-binary lawyers and staff from NALP, here) and office design strategies that provide support for a broader range of human experience, from neurotypical to neurodivergent (learn more about designing a neurodiverse workplace, here).

Conversations around the “return to work” and safety

Law office design is also an important part of the “return to work” conversation. The research is clear that employers need to draw their employees back to the office - forcing them simply will not work, as highlighted by this Harvard Business Review article:

“If leaders believe it’s important for people to return to the office — full or part-time — they need a plan for convincing everyone that it’s the right thing to do.”

If your office is a safe, welcoming and inclusive space where employees feel valued (because their health and wellness is prioritized), getting them back in the office will be much easier.

And as variants continue to be a part of our daily lives, employees need to feel that they are returning to a safer work environment. Healthy building strategies can support safer work environments (by, for example, monitoring air quality) and provide strategies for accurately communicating those benefits to employees, often through signage or third-party certification.

Law firm leaders should also be thinking about resilience, and preparing to manage the lasting impacts of this pandemic, as well as future pandemics. Public health research tells us there will be more pandemics and the likelihood increases as our climate changes.

Intersections with equity, diversity and inclusion

If you want to attract, mentor and support diverse leaders, your office design needs to reflect and support this intention

Everyone deserves the opportunity to do their best work, yet many “traditional” office spaces simply to do not support all users - and that needs to change.

Employees are far more likely to return to office spaces that are safe, inclusive, and support health and wellness. Office design that sets a broader range of users up for success can also support efforts to attract, retain and nurture diverse talent. The need to support diverse talent is highlighted by the 2021 National Association for Law Placement (NALP) report:

• Despite slight gains in 2021, just over 4% of all partners are women of color. Black women and Latinx women each continued to represent less than 1% of all partners in U.S. law firms.

• Equity partners in multi-tier law firms continue to be disproportionately white men. In 2021, 22.0% of equity partners were women and only 9.0% were people of color.

The NALP report also demonstrates how women and people of color continue to leave the profession (decreasing representation from associate to partnership level). As explained above, mindful revisions to law office design can play a part in supporting a more diverse workforce.

Healthy and inclusive office design aligns with broader Environmental, Social and Governance frameworks

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is rapidly becoming a standard part of business, and increasingly regulated. This means that all businesses, including law firms, are receiving a growing number of requests for information regarding their firm’s ESG metrics. Many of these metrics relate to office design and operations, including energy and water consumption, as well as metrics related to healthier, more inclusive spaces. Put another way, an office space with high energy draws, poor air quality, lack of natural daylighting, and no access to opportunities for physical activity, is quickly becoming a business risk.

Office design can - and should - support larger ESG goals and risk management strategies.

And lawyers are increasingly inquiring about ESG aspects. For example,

“Natalie Runyon, an analyst at the Thomson Reuters Institute said: ‘Associates are increasingly making their voices heard on the subject of how their employer approaches ESG. Savvy leaders within law firms are leveraging this passion and expertise by engaging younger generation lawyers on how to best embody ESG values.’”

Law firm leaders should see their office space as a physical manifestation of their values, and a way to demonstrate to their employees and clients that they care about their health and wellness. You can read the full Thompson Reuters report, Talent and ESG, Top Concerns as Firms Find New Ways of Working, here. A few key takeaways that are consistent with our market analysis:

• “ESG is intertwined with many of the topics law firm leaders are confronting today.”

• “As regulatory and market pressure around ESG priorities continues to mount for firms’ corporate clients, they are in turn growing increasingly concerned about how their vendors — including their outside counsel — are prioritizing ESG within their own businesses. Obviously, this has created an emphasis for law firms to prioritize improving their ESG standing, and to do so quickly.”

(And if you’re new to ESG, or have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry, you can learn more, here). And if you want to learn more about how healthy building strategies have been incorporated into ESG reports, this report from the International WELL Building Institute provides some great ideas and examples.

Where can you learn more?

At Sustainable Strategies, we are uniquely suited to understand the needs of law firms and the opportunities that law office space presents to support attorney health and wellness.

As with all things, there are low cost, low impact strategies and higher cost, higher impact strategies (and everything in between), to be considered. The strategies that work best for your firm depend on a variety of factors, including the design of your current space, whether you lease or own the space, and the terms of your lease (among many others).

We ground our recommendations in the latest research, and guide our clients to make design decisions that have the greatest impact and add the most value.

We would be happy to begin our conversation with an assessment of your space.

Key Questions Law Firm Leaders Should Be Asking

General Questions

1. Does our office space align with, and reflect, our values?

2. Do our employees and clients feel safe, welcome and supported in our office space?

3. Does our office space provide support for, and complement, our broader DEI work?

4. Does our space provide choice and options with respect to working conditions and location (i.e. quiet spaces for focused work, sound proof spaces for privacy, communal spaces for collaboration).

5. Does our firm operations align with client and stakeholder Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals / requirements?

Specific Aspects

1. Assess air quality and take steps to improve filtration and ventilation

2. Provide personal fans, heaters and institute a flexible dress code that allows for individual thermal regulation.

3. Design and provide inclusive restroom spaces, modify existing spaces.

4. Incorporate natural elements including plants, nature images and sounds.

5. Assess directional signage, acoustic and lighting considerations.

6. Revisit resilience and emergency preparedness plans.
   

Want to learn more? Check out our short video series: