In this week's cover story, Noam Scheiber writes about the crumbling of the legal profession. Gone is the promise of a cushy future. Today, the legal profession is awash with crushing debt, mass layoffs, and a distinct lack of upward mobility. One legacy of the old way: opulent offices designed to woo would-be customers into thinking that a particular firm is rock-solid. Here's a gallery of some of the legal world's greatest architectural hits:
Washington, D.C. firm Dickstein & Shapiro hired Gensler—a global design and architecture firm based in San Francisco—to facilitate its relocation to a 500,000-square-foot office space. Part of that redesign included, according to Gensler's website, "a multipurpose room with electrically controlled Skyfold partitions and a full-service cafeteria."
Greenberg Traurig hired NELSON to redesign its mega-luxe office space in Atlanta, occupying the top five floors of a new office tower in the city's Buckhead neighborhood. And yes, that is a real Lichtenstein.
Translucent walls were only part of Akin Gump's sustainability-oriented overhaul of its New York office.
Opulence reigns at Savannah firm Bouhan Falligant, whose Armstrong House offices were featured in the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Ambulance-chasers at 1-800-LAW-FIRM keep moving at the network's headquarters in Southfield, Michigan. (The firm is, technically speaking, not a firm, but rather a "network of legal experts.")
The Gilded Age isn't over at small-time firm Charfoos & Christensen, whose castle is located in Detroit.
A big, glittery blob is planned for Arent Fox's headquarters in D.C.
Ohio firm Calfee, Halter & Griswold's Cleveland office is a vision of grandeur.
Newcomer Durie Tangri's San Francisco offices are all the rage in the corporate interior design world.
Lede image via Shutterstock.
