How Portland law firm' hybrid workforces, including those at Stoel Rives and Miller Nash, could overhaul their downtown footprints - Portland Business Journal - The Business Journals
Two years after Portland law firms sent employees home to work remotely during the Covid-19 public emergency, they are starting to return to downtown — but not to the five-day-a-week routine of pre-pandemic times.
“As employers, we have to be flexible to the myriad of circumstances,” said Graciela Gomez Cowger, CEO of Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt. “We’ve been profoundly disrupted.”
Law firms are among the thousands of businesses assessing next steps, now that Oregon’s indoor mask mandate is set to expire March 12, and Covid cases and hospitalizations have fallen to levels not seen in months.
Most law firms never officially closed their offices, since mail still needed to be opened and documents printed, signed and delivered. But hearings, status conferences, depositions and client meetings all shifted online, and there they’ve remained. Now the transition back to in-person is underway, with participants masked and spread out around a huge conference table.
Four of Portland's largest law firms either have already welcomed employees back to the office two or three days a week or plan to start doing so in early April. All plan to build flexibility and hybrid work into long-term plans. None have downsized their office space, though two said that is a strong possibility in the future, especially when their leases are up.
The unpredictable nature of Covid has made planning tricky. Stoel Rives LLP, Portland’s largest firm, with 139 attorneys, had laid return-to-office plans last fall after the Delta variant receded, only to have those plans scuttled by Omicron.
Stoel pushed the start date for a “loose re-entry process” to Feb. 1, with the goal of moving to being in the office “more often than not” on March 1. The firm is not dictating a specific number of days, though many employees are coming in three days a week, explained Todd Hanchett, the Portland office's managing partner.
“Now there’s a broad understanding that people can work from home and decide to do so for whatever reason, for example, if they have a sick child,” Hanchett said. “We will not become a virtual law firm. At the same time, it’s not up to me whether we become five days a week, but I think it will be less than that, with flexibility built in. Some folks will want to be here five days a week and some less. Exactly where we land, I really don’t know. There’s no rush to determine it, with the false starts we had last year.”
Law firm leaders said their employees can be divided into three groups: Those who can’t wait to return to the office full time, those who don’t ever want to come back and those in between. Accommodating everyone will require a lot of flexibility and some experimentation.
Tonkon Torp LLP is planning for an early April return, said Managing Partner Kurt Ruttum.
“It’s not a requirement, but a strong encouragement for people to come back a couple of days a week,” Ruttum said. “And then we’re just going to play it by ear and see what happens. Every single plan I’ve made since 2020 has blown up because the virus did something unexpected. We’ve reconciled to the fact we’ll be hybrid for some time.”
Miller Nash will start a hybrid program in April for 90 days “and see how it goes,” said Managing Partner Kieran Curley.
“We’ve been remote the entire period and it’s worked tremendously well,” Curley said. “The reality is some people work better in the office, and some work better in their home office. We encourage people to do what works best for them, their clients and colleagues.”
Attitudes about the whole purpose of the office are also evolving. Rather than something people take for granted, the office affords an opportunity for collaboration, mentorship and socialization, casual conversations that spark ideas or provide teaching moments for younger attorneys.
“The office has changed from the place where we work to the place where we connect and collaborate and discuss issues that would benefit from the collective wisdom,” Schwabe’s Gomez Cowger said. “We don’t want the distance and isolation to eat away at those connections. We’re planning on doing a lot of celebrating.”
Curley, of Miller Nash, said attorneys will need to be more deliberate about scheduling gatherings to maintain the firm’s culture and relationships, since coworkers don’t routinely see each other every day.
Another big change that has taken place, at least at Schwabe: relaxing of the dress code.
“We used to have casual Friday and now we’re implementing that more across the board to cross the great divide between soft pants and suit that probably don’t even fit any more,” Gomez Cowger said.
Long-term, firms need to figure out their space needs. Some are sitting tight, others looking to reduce their footprints.
Stoel moved into the top eight floors of Park Avenue West five years ago and has no plans to reduce its footprint, at least for now, Hanchett said. Schwabe is committed to the downtown corridor, with no immediate plans to downsize, Gomez Cowger explained.
Miller Nash, which has three floors in the U.S. Bank Tower, is “actively evaluating” alternatives when its lease is up at the end of 2023, Curley said. The firm will be testing out “hoteling” of offices for those who don’t plan to come in very often.
“One thing I can guarantee you is we’ll have less space than we have now because we don’t need it and we'll have much more flexible space,” he said.
Tonkon Torp has three floors in the Pioneer Tower, but Ruttum said it’s an “open question” as to how much space the firm will need going forward.
“We’ll be looking at that in depth,” he said. “It likely will be less than we have been living with.”
Largest Law Firms in the Portland Metro Area
Ranked by Number of attorneys in Clackamas, Multnomah & Washington counties in Oregon & Clark County, Washingt
| Rank | Name | Number of attorneys in Clackamas, Multnomah & Washington counties in Oregon & Clark County, Washingt |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stoel Rives LLP | 139 |
| 2 | Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt | 103 |
| 3 | Tonkon Torp LLP | 95 |
| View This List | ||
source: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/03/09/law-offices.html
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