Lawyers Losing Offices in the New Open Work Environment (USA)

Response #1: We are moving to an open office environment next year. We have about 500 employees in the office and six attorneys, three assistants and two paralegals in Legal. Due to the concerns you mention (attorney-client privilege and handling private and confidential info), the architect designed huddle rooms for us. I believe we will have four (or six) of them. The intent is that they will be used for phone calls and meetings where privacy and confidentiality is required. Our White Plains office already has this open environment format and uses huddle rooms as well. It seems to work well for them, but I think they may travel a bit more than us.¹

 

Response #2: I think the concerns are overblown. Perhaps it's because I worked for nearly ten years in a Dilbert-style cube farm environment, in which everyone -- including our multimillionaire Chief Executive Officer (CEO) -- was assigned to an identical 10x10 cubicle.

 

Not every word a lawyer breathes is privileged or confidential, and as long as you have an option to use a conference room for truly sensitive discussions all should be well.²

 

Response #3: Everyone in our workplace, including the CEO, is in a cubicle or even less segregated space. He has a dedicated closed-door room with a table that only he can use. We have quite a few (but seemingly never enough) small conference rooms where we can go when we need to discuss something privately. It's kind of hard to argue for the legal team getting private offices when the other executives don't. And I haven't found it that restricting. I do have a privacy filter on my monitor so that no one can see what's on it unless they come stand immediately behind me, and I need to be careful what's lying on my desk, but I ought to be careful about that anyway. And don't underestimate the value of hearing what's going on. You can learn a lot. I put on headphones if I really need to block out noise.³

 

Response #4: We have a similar arrangement. I was skeptical when I started here a few years ago, but I've come to like it. We have a small (4-person) legal department, so most of the people around me work in other groups. I think it makes us much more approachable for staff. We have small conference rooms to use for calls and meetings. If I have something particularly sensitive to work on, especially employment matters, I take my laptop to a conference room.⁴

 

Response #5: Our corporate headquarters went to the modular system, eliminating all traditional office, except of course for the CEO, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and most senior executives. Our legal department is very small (was up to 6, now down to 3). We handle everything from contract drafting to personnel matters. While I personally loathe being in a glass box (I'm fortunate - I actually have a door, although clear glass and paper thin walls), I realize that it can work and is highly dependent on the type of work an attorney does. Imagine getting a call or having someone come see you about a new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint and a non-legal department employee can overhear everything. Yes, you can always just find a more secure location, but our office is so busy and so fluid, inadvertent eavesdropping can be a problem and having to determine when you can talk on your phone or print something moment by moment, matter by matter, is terribly inefficient and creates even more anxiety. Finally, as I have told employees for years, many times just hearing something inadvertently can put a non-legal department employee is a very awkward and perhaps troubling position.

 

I will leave you with the following excerpts from a 2006 article in Fortune Magazine (caveat, I could have made a mistake in typing the quotes):

• Excerpts from "Cubicles: The Great Mistake," Fortune Magazine, 2006.
• "Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity. " (Robert Propst: "The cubiclizing of people in modern corporations is monolithic insanity.")
• "Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence."
• "Propst's workstations were designed to be flexible, but in practice they were seldom altered or moved at all. Lined up in identical rows, they became the dystopian world that three academics described as "bright satanic offices" in a 1998 book, Workplaces of the Future."⁵

Response #6: Much of our legal department moved to open space environment 3 years ago. My overall impression is that it forced many folks to start working from home (we have a significant workforce who is remote, and the legal department is spread out around the country). We use conference rooms, hallways, our cars, etc. to conduct calls when we don't want the rest of the office to hear. Also, it has increased our use of email and Instant Messaging responses -- since it's easier to type than talk in an entirely open office environment. It's not ideal, but we've made it work. Most of the company is open space, so the other departments are doing the same things we are when they don't want others to hear!⁶

 

Response #7: I flat out refused to move to an open space when we tried moving to a whole company open space theme. Myself and other executives got large offices with filing space and conference area while our teams were grouped into open space. I have had a few issues with 'overheard' conversations that were grossly misunderstood by business units and caused a ruckus. I'm not a fan of the legal department being intermixed with other groups in open space. However, as a team in it's own space, it might have worked better. I unfortunately feel like I deal with complaints about it weekly, if not daily. Other departments, such as Human Resources, despise it as well.⁷

 

Response #8: Our office moved to the "open space" environment in July. I generally work remotely at least 2-3 times per week as it is just too distracting in the office when reviewing contracts and constantly needing to move to a conference room to have a conference call was counter-productive. Make sure your telecommuting policy is up to date. I do agree that not everything an attorney says is confidential (most likely less than 50%!), but an open space is just not practical for all departments.⁸