Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8 25 hen Marcus Sixta was in law school, he had the usual ideas about what professional life would look like if he made partner at a law firm — including visions of a spacious corner office with leather furniture and walls lined by diplomas and art. But now that the 37-year-old runs his own Calgary-based firm, the reality looks very different. There's no art on his walls — because his office has no walls. In fact, Sixta doesn't even have his own dedicated personal office space. "I work a lot at home or at the airport," the family-law specialist tells me. "When I'm at the office, sometimes I'm in a shared space with my assistant. Or I'll pull up to one of the common tables. If I'm reading a lot of PDF [documents], I can just find a comfortable chair in one of the nooks. Or I can make phone calls from one of the private spaces." Sixta's firm, Crossroads Law, employs four full-time lawyers, an accountant, several contractors and a handful of permanent support staff. By prior arrangement, two workers have their own offices. But everyone else, including all newly hired personnel, typically situate themselves within a communal space that includes diner-style booths, tables with chairs and cubicles — a first-come, first-serve practice known with office management circles as "hoteling" or "hot desking." Clutter is minimized, with most incoming documents immediately scanned to the cloud and dispatched to recycling. "In the past, law firms tended to use fancy offices to attract new hires," Sixta tells me. "But I'm not interested in spending a lot of money on overhead or in any kind of ego-based business model. What I offer lawyers is a chance to work from anywhere. If you need to meet with a cli- ent or have a sensitive conversation, there are conference rooms. But personal offices don't mean much to today's grads. The things they want are more freedom and money." W hat architects call "open-plan" offices have been around since the scriptoria of the Middle Ages. In the corporate world of the Mad Men era, these often took the form of large, almost industrial-sized spaces in which typists, clerks or technicians would be seated in neat Cartesian columns and rows. During the latter half of the 20th century, the advent of modular cubicle technology transformed these spaces from grids into mazes. The more modern form of open-plan organization — exemplified by Sixta's arrangement in Calgary — emphasizes flexible landscapes that allow for different working styles and project needs. Such arrangements have become the norm in Silicon Valley since the dot-com boom. But in recent years, even large, staid blue-chip companies such as IBM and General Electric have embraced the trend, following academic studies showing that bright, open spaces tend to increase productivity and employee satisfaction. Until now, the legal profession has been a notable holdout to open-plan trends. This is a profession that, since ancient days, has always been sensitive to matters of status, protocol and credentials. And the architecture of courthouses and law firms has tended to reflect this in style BY JONATHAN KAY Miller Thomson Vancouver OPEN-CONCEPT OFFICE THE LEGAL PROFESSION MAY BE FINALLY ACCEPTING THE REALITY — AND PHILOSOPHY — OF THE W

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