Law Firm Practice Group

Real estate spend is often the largest “fixed” expense on a firm’s P&L and must be managed with rigor and financial discipline. Our LFPG experts bring a holistic approach to negotiation strategy and transaction structuring—balancing cost, flexibility, and capital and credit leverage to mitigate overall impact on PPEP.

We achieve this by integrating our extensive capital markets intelligence and expertise with advanced financial analytics and strategic timing to help firm leadership develop a comprehensive business case that builds consensus and supports decision-making with conviction.

Developing a highly customized approach to space planning and employee experience is the new standard of excellence when making decisions that impact real estate and current ways of working. Our team helps firms of all sizes understand and strategize space, tech, and culture to define the optimal holistic environment for employees to do their best work and help firms thrive.

We assess current office space effectiveness and employee experience objectively to co-create a clear and actionable vision for firm leaders to move forward with. Of utmost importance is implementing a process that meets law firms where they are, minimizes rumors and disruption, and provides recommendations tailored to the firm-specific culture, goals, and business needs.

We proactively identify opportunities to drive efficiencies, mitigate risks, and establish benchmarks that align your real estate and business needs. By utilizing leading-edge portfolio analytics technology, our team can take a holistic view of a firm’s portfolio functional space allocation, headcount, and costs to identify opportunities to implement cost savings initiatives.

Our approach entails three phases, with the first focused on due diligence & strategy development, where we gain a baseline understanding of a client’s current real estate portfolio; identify mark-to-market opportunities and right-sizing opportunities; align on key business drivers for growth and optimization; and develop a real estate strategy that supports a firm’s long-term financial and operational objectives. The second phase is centered around the implementation of the portfolio’s direction, and the last phase in our approach consists of ongoing KPI reporting & strategic support to ensure our team stays on track with goal alignment and makes any necessary strategy adjustments.

We help law firm leaders mitigate occupancy risk by identifying capital markets exposure that may impact their landlord before it becomes a liability. Our team evaluates each landlord’s capital structure, financing sources, and debt profile to reveal hidden vulnerabilities — from maturing loans and recapitalization risk to constrained liquidity and covenant exposure. This insight allows clients to anticipate potential defaults, avoid “zombie buildings”, and transact only with owners that have the financial capacity to perform.

Our underwriting platform draws upon in-house institutional investment management expertise to anticipate how landlords will approach negotiation and execution. By analyzing ownership objectives, portfolio positioning, and return requirements, we develop a forensic understanding of a landlord’s exposure, flexibility, and likely decision pathways. This perspective allows our team to predict ownership behavior and guide our clients toward the most effective negotiation strategies.

Covering areas such as supply, market dynamics, and location feasibility, GIS mapping and insights empower our clients to make informed decisions through data visualization and comparison of multiple factors and locations. We leverage data sources such as ESRI and Lightcast for location intelligence and labor analytics, as well as innovative and proprietary technology platforms that enable law firms to fully understand market dynamics impacting site selection decision-making for shared services functions or centers of excellence.

We evaluate the environment by leveraging:

• Area Amenities
• Available Labor
• Market Dynamics
• Demo/Psychographics
• Commute Analysis/Transit Access
• Location Feasibility
• Site Selection
• Suitability Analysis
• Competitor Analysis
• Employee Heat Maps

Backed by science and analytics, understanding an area’s ecology is an integral step to the strategic planning, market suitability, and site selection process.