The pandemic has encouraged new forms of collaboration and nontraditional working. Management advisory firms are seeing a reduction of open workstations in exchange for more collaborative settings. Firms should also implement policies and design strategies that help employees in a new hybrid work model that combines face-to-face interactions with virtual collaboration. This can extend chance encounters and informal collisions to the virtual realm.

Some management advisory firms are taking a universal design approach, where a large percentage of workplace design is globally prescriptive, but a meaningful amount is reflective of local culture and materials. Universal design makes facilities more functional for a wider range of people, recognizing that there’s no such thing as the “average” user, and creating an environment that has a collective benefit for all people who need to use it.

The COVID crisis and the shift to remote work have prompted some law firms to rethink their real estate requirements. Dynamic seating, along with flexible amenities and alternative choices like hoteling suites, is an emerging paradigm that can help some law firms achieve significant space savings. Recognizing that lawyers can be engaged and productive no matter where they are, the legal industry has an opportunity to build a more flexible culture by making remote working a permanent part of their operations.