Correction, 1/10/2013, 10:45 a.m. EST: The original version of this story contained an incorrect figure for the amount of space Arnold & Porter has leased in the Washington, D.C., building its office there will move to in the fall of 2015. The correct figure is 375,000 square feet. The fourth paragraph of this story has been revised to reflect the correct information. We regret the error.

Law firms are shaking up the commercial real estate market around the country, plotting office moves, gutting their current spaces, and reassuring landlords with lease renewals.

The nation’s capital has been particularly busy in this regard of late. Cooley’s 80 Washington, D.C., lawyers, for instance, started the new year with a crosstown move into 87,000 square feet of space in the city’s iconic Warner Building, including a few floors once occupied by now-defunct D.C.–based litigation firm Howrey. On the way to moving into to the new space, Cooley terminated its existing lease at 777 Sixth Street N.W. in Chinatown, according to the Washington Business Journal. In exchange, the firm’s new landlord, Vornado Realty Trust, agreed to take over responsibility for that lease and is currently shopping the space to prospective tenants, the Business Journal reports.

The move gives Cooley 30 percent more space than it had at the previous location, where its lawyers and staffers had worked since 2007.

Elsewhere in D.C., Arnold & Porter announced this week that it has committed to a 20-year lease in a Boston Properties–owned building to be constructed in the city’s Penn Quarter neighborhood. The firm said it expects to move into its new space—375,000 square feet in the 11-story building at 601 Massachusetts Avenue—in the fall of 2015. (The building currently standing on the site, which is home to National Public Radio, will be razed to make way for the new development).

Arnold & Porter managing partner Richard Alexander tells sibling publication The Blog of Legal Times that the move will actually represent a downsizing from the firm’s current D.C. footprint at 555 12th Street N.W., which has housed its local operations since 1995. Even so, Alexander said, the new space will allow the firm room for future growth, thanks to a more flexible design centered around the same-size offices and technology-friendly work spaces that are becoming common features for law firm tenants ready to shed wood-paneled offices built before the rise of computers.

Also in D.C., Patton Boggs recently signed a 15-year lease extension for its current 206,00 square feet of space in Washington’s West End neighborhood, BLT reports. The firm plans to remodel its flagship office, where it has been located since 1978. Across town, Linklaters solidified its D.C. presence in December by signing a 10-year lease for 9,900 square feet in the Homer Building, according to BLT. The commitment follows the Magic Circle firm’s return to the city last year after an initial run there from 1992 to 2002.