Let's look at ways of improving your law office layout:

1. Natural Lighting

Natural lighting is known to bring a feel-good factor to workers, which impacts their productivity. A well-lit office with open areas makes for a pleasant workplace whilst also increasing visibility, helping to improve an employee's mood. Therefore, law firms should consider office seating plans and desk arrangements that take advantage of natural lighting whenever possible.

2. Desks and Seating

Provide an ergonomic desk and seat that fit the size and other preferences of each employee. Be sure the seating plan makes for smooth movement to avoid the unhealthy effects of over-sitting. Likewise, clean spaces with no unnecessary items can help improve employees' focus in the workplace.

3. Storage

Proper storage design should be part of your office layout plan. Checking the depth and width of folders, boxes, cabinets, and other places for storing your legal paperwork is very important. Likewise, open storage helps workers in an office to quickly locate documents, which helps prioritise and organise workflows. Strategically-located shelves also make for convenient access records.

4. Shared Gadgets

Workstations usually share some equipment, for example, printers. In such instances, it is good to identify a central place to position these devices for easier access.

Additionally, consider using a multi-purpose printer that can print, photocopy, and scan documents. With such equipment, employees will accomplish more within a shorter time. Also, the fewer the electronic gadgets in the office, the less cluttered the workplace looks.

5. Collaboration Spaces

There is a need to have collaboration spaces inside the office for holding team meetings. This sort of arrangement is better suited to legal teams that need to collaborate closely to do their job well.

However, remember to provide some privacy to personnel who are frequently answering or making calls, such as admin staff. Doing so ensures that one can have an interactive and meaningful phone conversation without disturbing other workers. Such an office should have closed doors.

According to research, having the right staff seat close to each other can improve productivity by up to 15%. A suggestion would be having your interns seated closely to their supervisor to allow for them to be better mentored. The right seating plan can inspire collaboration among employees in the workplace.

6. Open Areas for Much Needed Breaks

There is a need to have open areas where workers can have informal meetings, socialise, or take breaks from work. They can always come back fresh and revitalised.

7. Connectivity, Charging, and Personal Devices

Are you letting your employees use personal devices, such as smartphones or tablets to do official work? If you are, be sure their desks or offices provide strategic outlets for charging or plugging the gadgets into the office network or internet.

8. Legal Practice Management Software

Leveraging legal practice management software can help with your office layout plans, first by eliminating the need to install physical file cabinets. For example, LawMaster's Cabinets can save emails, scanned documents, and maintain your files in an electronic format. Our intelligent software helps to minimise error-prone manual data entry, and it automates many repetitive everyday administrative tasks. You can use the system to categorise records, files, and emails automatically, allowing for intuitive retrieval and storage.

To discover how LawMaster can help improve your Legal Practices productivity, contact us today.