Hybrid work models appear to be the way of the future for the legal industry and while firms will spend the short-term fretting about mentorship and face time, the long-term challenge will be office space. There’s not much reason to be dropping big bucks on floorspace that sits vacant 40 percent of the time. In a lot of ways, with hybrid work as multi-year leases expire, more firms will have to grapple with fundamentally reimagining the legal office.

There are a number of ways to reinvent the office environment. Some firms were even looking ahead before the pandemic, like White & Case embracing communal work spaces and Boies Schiller focusing its new office around conference rooms and war rooms as opposed to traditional offices. And in the post-pandemic hybrid world, we’ve seen firms adopt “hoteling.”

The latter example, California’s Farella Braun + Martel, made its leap into the future with the help of Maptician. Maptician doesn’t love the term “hoteling” but since there’s not really a handy alternative, that’s what we’re going with.