As a family law firm, your office space is more than a hub for holding important meetings with clients, storing paperwork, and keeping up with colleagues on current caseloads. It’s the first impression that many clients have of your business outside of marketing materials and preliminary phone calls. What’s more, it’s a place where you’ll be able to secure potential word-of-mouth referrals as vendors, community members, and more visit your office. When clients, vendors, employees, and others who are associated with your office walk into your modern law office design, they’ll be impressed by your impeccable taste and reassured that your office is ready to practice law in modern times.
Why You Should Update Your Office Regularly
Updating your decor and interior design might not seem like a big deal, but people naturally judge a place or business by its external appearance. The way you handle one aspect of your business can indicate how you handle all other aspects of the business to those who visit it. Whether this is a fair assessment or not is debatable, but the truth of the matter is that many people put a lot of weight on appearances when they judge something or someone.
Even if you provide excellent legal counsel and services, clients may be hesitant to work with you if they feel uncomfortable in your office. Heavily outdated furniture, maintenance issues, and wallpaper that was in style before your clients were even born may make them question where you are investing the money they pay you. It can also lower confidence that you stay up-to-date on current law practices.
If your office design is stuck in the past, current and potential future clients may worry that your practice is stuck in the past, too. To restore faith that your office can keep up with current trends in the law and otherwise, you should update your modern law office design every few years. Keeping things fresh in the office shows clients that you’re an innovative law firm with a pulse on current trends. This can be a huge booster for confidence, trust, and referrals after you’ve worked with a client.
A law office may only be a physical space to some attorneys, but it’s probably the best marketing tool in your toolbox as an attorney. It powerfully speaks to your brand. Beyond that, it helps you build trust with new and existing clients. When clients feel at ease in your office space, they’re sure to want to come back to your office with any legal issues that may arise. They may also recommend your office to family, friends, and acquaintances if it leaves a lasting positive impression. Little touches like modern design choices, clean office spaces, and beverages can make your clients feel the care and intentional thought that you put into designing your office with them in mind.
Beyond attracting clients, your office can help you catch the eye of the best paralegals, administrative staff, and even new lawyers when you’re looking to expand your team of attorneys. When you want to attract high-quality staff to your office, having an updated law office that feels comfortable and professional can make the difference between snagging the best candidates in the talent pool and settling for less. Without a modern law office design, you may fall behind offices that are working hard to keep up with the times and stay ahead of the game in their design choices. If you don’t know the first thing about designing a law office, you can always hire a team of interior designers to help you bring your office design into the 21st century.
A Fresh Coat of Paint
One of the easiest ways to create the appearance of a modern law office design is to hire a professional interior painter to touch up the walls and add a fresh coat of paint. Although the paint on the walls is easy to overlook, it’s often one of the first things that clients and potential new hires notice in your office. Old, dirty paint jobs are sure to turn clients off or make them think that you might not maintain your office to their standards. On the other hand, new paint jobs can make even an older building look brand new. When you’re choosing an interior painter, try to find someone who has already worked as a commercial painter for a while. You can also look for interior painters who have painted law offices. This way, you may be able to consult with the painter to find a color palette that suits the trends for a modern law office design. If you want to spice up your office design, you can stray from the typical white or cream-colored walls and choose a bold color palette to stand out from the crowd.
Before you select a paint color, you should research modern office design trends. You should also consider the other decor and design choices you plan to make so you can coordinate your paint colors with them. For example, if you intend to keep your other design choices sleek, modern, and elegant, you won’t want to paint your walls neon colors or add a bright accent wall to the main part of the office. On the other hand, if you intend to stand out with bold color choices in your design, a meek beige wall simply won’t work.
In short, it’s best to plan your other design choices and choose your paint based on those preferences. Creating a strategy to modernize your office will save you time and money in the long run. You don’t want to paint your entire office and then change design directions. In that case, you’ll have to hire the painters again and have them repaint the office. This will cost you money, time, and resources that you could pour into other activities or aspects of the design.
Don’t Forget About the Kitchen
As a law office, you may think that it’s irrelevant to look into kitchen trends as you plan your modern law office design. After all, you may not even have a kitchen in your office. If you do have a kitchen, it’s probably a neglected area that’s tucked away from the client-facing parts of the office. It may have a bunch of dirty coffee mugs piled in the sink and an outdated table and chair set that’s seen better days decades ago. While your clients may never see the kitchen, there’s always a chance that you might take a client to get a cup of coffee in the kitchen or they may see the kitchen in passing as they walk to another part of the office. If all the other rooms in your office are updated but the kitchen is a wreck or completely outdated, it may send a message to your clients that you don’t have an eye for detail or that the beautiful design choices in the other areas of the office are just a facade.
Even in areas that will mostly be used by your staff like the kitchen, you should tailor your modern law office design to attract clients. This is because clients may end up seeing areas that are mainly intended for use by your staff. If you carefully plan out everything from the kitchen cabinet design to break room seating, you’ll give your clients confidence that you think about the little details and take care of your staff. When you give your staff a comfortable environment to take breaks and prepare morning coffee, they’ll appreciate your efforts. What’s more, it will create a workplace culture that allows your employees to do their best work. They’ll return from breaks refreshed and may even start preferring to take breaks in the eat-in kitchen instead of a restaurant outside of the office.
Perfect the Design from the Inside to the Outside
After you’ve painted the interior of your office, it’s time to call an exterior painting company to touch up the outside of your office. Depending on whether your law office is leased out of a building that houses other offices or it’s a freestanding office that you own, the exterior of the building may or may not be your responsibility to maintain. Still, there’s no denying that a great modern law office design wouldn’t be complete without an updated exterior. If your law office has peeling paint on the outside or it’s been painted a dull color in the past, you can liven it up with an exterior paint job. Beyond improving your law office design concept, exterior paint can help protect your office from the elements. It can also give prospective clients the impression that your office is new and improved if you’ve been a long-standing family law office in the community.
Budget for Your Renovations
Like with most aspects of maintaining a business, remodeling your office to create a modern law office design takes careful financial planning to execute. Rather than throwing money at the project on a whim, you’ll want to sit down with professionals like your tax accountant and other financial planners to determine whether renovating your law office is in the cards financially.
If your law office is just starting, you may want to slowly remodel the office to scale it as your business scales. For example, you can start by scheduling small projects like repainting the reception area, completing maintenance tasks, or adding some updated furniture to your office.
Once your office has grown more successful as a business, you can pencil in heftier projects and plan for them. Although you may have an idea of what your dream office looks like, you should stay realistic about what your business can afford at this time. If you have a beautiful office that you can’t afford to maintain, you may end up losing the office and the team of lawyers you have built with it. You may be able to write off some of the expenses of renovating your office on your taxes, so consult with financial professionals about the pros and cons of remodeling the law office into a modern law office design.
If you don’t have an office space yet, you can work with a realtor to find an office within your budget. Discuss your goals for your firm in the short-term and long-term so that they can help you find a space that is appropriately sized for your needs. As you’re selecting an office, picture how it might look if you fill it with modern office decor and modern design choices. This can help you select a place that will fit your preferences for design choices and make it easier to accommodate those in the long run.
Consider Your Clients’ Needs and Wants
At the end of the day, lawyers provide a legal service such as child custody counsel and family law counsel to their clients. Since you know your clients best, you probably know what their preferences and needs may be in your office. If you have families who bring in children, making sure to secure breakable decor items, adding a play area in the waiting room, and expanding your office size to accommodate seating multiple family members can go a long way in building trust in your clients.
Some basic needs like a functional toilet mean that it’s best to call in a local plumbing contractor before you focus on the cosmetic renovations you may want to make as you update your law office. A functional law office is just as important as a fashionable one. When your clients feel that they’re getting their needs met while they’re at your office, they’ll feel more comfortable working with you on their legal issues and visiting your office as needed.
In short, there are more modern law office design choices that will bring new clients into your new family law firm than we can count. Mainly, maintaining your office, updating every corner of it, and improving the exterior along with the interior areas will go a long way in promoting your brand. With these tips, you’ll notice a flow of new clients seeking legal services in your new updated office space in no time.
