Baker McKenzie chooses GoBright for their new London offices

Baker McKenzie, a global legal leader, was established in Chicago in 1949. It has since expanded its operations to major business centers worldwide, leveraging its extensive network and expertise in cross-border transactions. The firm’s comprehensive legal services encompass corporate law, finance, litigation, tax, and intellectual property. With an unwavering commitment to delivering practical and innovative solutions, Baker McKenzie has consistently demonstrated its dedication to excellence, earning it a place among the world’s top law firms.

Project Overview

Following significant growth over recent years, the Firm was looking for a new home for their 1000+ UK-based employees, as the lease at their offices at New Bridge Street, London, was approaching expiry. The move gave Baker McKenzie the unique opportunity to redefine its office layout to create a space that reflected the Firm’s culture, a once-in-a-generation chance to make a space that reflected its values around collaboration, creative thinking and best-in-class service.

The Firm wanted to create an environment where people were excited to work, which enabled the continued delivery of first-class service to the Firm’s outstanding client base in the face of changing delivery models for legal advice. In 2020, Baker McKenzie confirmed they would relocate to offices at 280 Bishopsgate, Spitalfields, with the physical move concluding in late 2023.

280 Bishopsgate has been meticulously designed to facilitate collaboration, sustainability, and well-being. It’s a dynamic workspace that drives team engagement, inviting everyone to be part of the change. The building features an intelligent use of space, with quiet corners on four of the six floors, enabling people to do ‘focused work’ without distraction. With collaboration desk zones across all working floors, the workspace fosters cross-team collaboration with colleagues in ‘team neighbourhoods’, but with sufficient private meeting and phone call space to allow private work to be conducted.

Rachel Slade was the Programme Lead. She explains that team engagement and collaboration were critical drivers for the relocation project.

“One of our main objectives moving to Bishopsgate was to create a completely agile building, and one way that we wanted to deliver this was to have a ‘no-assigned’ desk policy, driving the need for a platform that could enable people to book desks intuitively, integrated with our other business platforms to increase overall efficiency and productivity.”

Solution Implementation

Baker McKenzie chose the GoBright Smart Workplace platform for several reasons, including the platform’s desk check-in feature. This feature enables users to streamline the process of finding a desk, saving time and reducing administrative burdens. GoBright’s ‘check-in’ option allows users to see when colleagues are also in the office, allowing desks to be taken together and fostering team collaboration and engagement.

Rachel explains, ‘We wanted a solution that enabled our people to find and check into desks quickly and simply. The GoBright platform offered an intuitive user interface allowing quick and easy interrogation of the data with the options to change the way we use the platform easily and seamlessly in the future, increasing collaboration opportunities. We were so impressed with the GoBright platform, particularly the integration it offers with Microsoft O365 and other platforms we were already using across the Firm.”

The GoBright platform also includes a feature that enables users to control the height adjustable motor on Linak desks, a unique integration through which each user can save their personal preferences in the GoBright app. This approach, often referred to as ‘personalised hot desking’ is functional at Baker McKenzie where all desks offer simple height adjustability through integration with the puck. Users pre-set their preferred height of the desk, which is activated when you check-in, creating a more personal experience for desk users.

Rachel continues, “My personal objective was to create an environment where everyone who visits Bishopsgate loves at least one thing about it, and I think we have achieved that! We have created a space that drives cross-team collaboration, enabling teams to work together more productively.”

Future Considerations

So, what does the future hold for 280 Bishopsgate? Rachel explains, “We want to start integrating different elements now, such as temperature and air quality and start to mine the data delivered from applications like GoBright, investigating and reacting to emerging trends. Ultimately, we have created a unique, modern environment; now we need to continue to evolve and look for ways the technology and environment can integrate more seamlessly with our teams, supporting them to work smarter and support our legal practices.”