Across D.C., lots of law firms sublease portions of their offices. Law firms and nonprofits take up almost half of the leased real estate in Washington. Of that, about two-thirds or 1.6 million square feet may be subleased out, according to CBRE researchers.
However, space contractions aren’t necessarily omens for law firm financial stability, Sherry Cushman of Cushman & Wakefield said Thursday. Instead, law firms have taken tougher looks at how they use their office floor space, and may renovate and shuffle lawyers to house more in fewer square feet, she said.
Morgan Lewis, after it consumed Bingham McCutchen in 2014, kept both its Morgan Lewis legacy building on Pennsylvania Avenue and Bingham’s spot on K Street in downtown Washington. The firm shuffled the practices based out of either building, moving more than a third of the Bingham lawyers to Pennsylvania Avenue. Since then, the firm has renovated the Pennsylvania Avenue flagship.
About 30,000 square feet of the firm’s K Street office—aka a floor or two of “Morgan Lewis West”—is rented to other businesses, including Exxon Mobil Corp.’s government-affairs office and Carr Maloney, a small regional law firm, at the end of last year, according to CBRE. More than 100,000 square feet, which is almost all the square footage the firm has left on K Street, will be on the market for subtenants beginning in July 2017, the real estate brokers said.
Morgan Lewis’ administration director and a firm spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment this week.
