For much of the history of the legal profession, clients visiting their lawyers’ offices was simply part of practicing law. Clients would come in for meetings, sit in conference rooms, review documents, and discuss their matters face-to-face with counsel. Law firms accordingly had good reason to maintain presentable offices, since the office was part of the experience they offered clients. An impressive office might even reassure clients that they had hired successful lawyers. In recent years, however, clients seem to have largely stopped visiting their lawyers’ offices.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, technology was making office visits less necessary. Email eliminated the need for many meetings, and conference calls allowed clients and lawyers to discuss matters without traveling. Nevertheless, in-person meetings were still a relatively ordinary part of practicing law. Before the pandemic, I had a handful of clients visit my office, and I sometimes traveled to clients’ offices for meetings as well.
Since the pandemic, my experience has been entirely different. I cannot remember a single client visiting my office since COVID-19 changed how lawyers and clients communicate. This might partly reflect my own practice, and lawyers in certain fields undoubtedly see clients in person more frequently. But from conversations with other lawyers and my general experience in the profession, it seems that client visits to law offices are far less common than they once were.
There is a pretty obvious reason for this: traveling to a lawyer’s office is usually a waste of time. A client might spend 30 minutes or an hour getting to a lawyer’s office, sit through a meeting, and then spend another 30 minutes or an hour traveling back. Lawyers can face similar inefficiencies when they travel to clients. Unless some particular reason exists for everyone to be in the same room, the same conversation can usually occur over the phone or a videoconference.
COVID-19 seems to have permanently changed expectations surrounding such meetings. Before the pandemic, someone might have suggested an in-person meeting simply because meeting face-to-face was considered the normal way to handle an important discussion. During the pandemic, lawyers and clients were forced to discover that most of these conversations could occur remotely without much being lost. Once people realized that an hour-long meeting did not need to consume several additional hours of everyone’s day, there was little reason to return to the old practice.
Indeed, telephone calls are often my preferred way of communicating with clients about issues that require an actual conversation. They can be arranged quickly, no commute is involved, and everyone can return to whatever they were doing immediately. Videoconferences can serve much the same purpose when seeing the other participants is useful. Neither requires a client to visit my office.
The disappearance of client office visits should also change how lawyers think about whether they need offices in the first place. One traditional reason for maintaining a nice office was that clients actually saw it. A well-appointed reception area, large conference rooms, and an impressive address could help a firm project success and professionalism. But that justification becomes much weaker when the people lawyers are supposedly trying to impress never walk through the door.
This is particularly relevant for solo practitioners and smaller law firms. Office space can be a substantial expense, especially in major metropolitan areas, and maintaining an office often involves costs beyond rent. Utilities, insurance, internet service, cleaning, and other expenses can add up. If clients rarely visit and if lawyers can perform most of their work remotely, it is reasonable to ask what all of that money is actually buying.
Of course, some lawyers still have substantial reasons to maintain offices. Certain practice areas involve frequent client meetings, and lawyers may need physical space for depositions, interviews, mediations, or other proceedings. Some attorneys also work better in an office or value having colleagues physically nearby. And lawyers who have employees may decide that maintaining a common workplace improves collaboration and supervision.
But these are reasons for having an office because lawyers themselves need or want one. They are different from the traditional assumption that lawyers need impressive offices because clients expect to visit them. For many attorneys, that client-facing rationale may have largely disappeared.
Lawyers have already abandoned plenty of practices that technology rendered unnecessary. Documents that were once delivered by messenger are emailed, meetings that once required travel occur by video, and numerous court appearances can now be handled remotely. Client office visits may be another tradition that has quietly faded away.
If lawyers enjoy having offices or believe physical workplaces improve their practices, there is nothing wrong with paying for them. But lawyers should probably stop assuming that an office, particularly an expensive or impressive one, is necessary to project professionalism to clients. Increasingly, clients may never see the place. And if virtually nobody outside a law firm ever walks through its doors, lawyers should at least consider whether they need those doors at all.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothman.law.
