Kevin Sullivan, chairman and chief executive officer of Winstead, says the firm’s new headquarters office in Dallas is smaller than its previous home in Renaissance Tower but seems more spacious. He says that’s the difference between a space designed in 1987 and one designed in 2012.
“That reduction in space is a funny thing because it seems bigger,” Sullivan says about the firm’s new offices in the Winstead Building.
On Monday, the firm moved its headquarters into 130,000 square feet in the Harwood district building, after spending 25 years in Renaissance Tower, where the firm had 200,000 square feet of space. The new space is 35 percent smaller than the old.
The 300-lawyer firm has 130 lawyers in Dallas, he says.
Sullivan says individual offices for shareholders and associates in the new building are about the same size as in the old building, but the firm’s space is configured more efficiently. The new library, for instance, has 39 shelves, compared to 250 shelf units in the old one. Sullivan says paper files of all sorts — not just law books in the library — are now stored digitally, which allows the firm to need much less file space. Also, there are fewer secretarial stations than in the old space because the circa-1987 ratio of one secretary to one lawyer is long gone, he says.
“We have way more kind of collaborative areas, conference areas and that sort of thing,” Sullivan says, noting that the new building is still relatively close to the heart of downtown, but in a “park-like setting.”
Sullivan says Renaissance Tower is a “beautiful building” but the firm’s space was inefficient. The firm is using eight of the 10 floors of the new building, compared to six larger floors in Renaissance Tower.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
There is always room in Dallas for another law firm. Best of luck.
Posted by: Dallas Coworking | November 01, 2012 at 01:12 PM
A new place to start, I think Dallas is a great choice. Good luck and best wishes to your business.
Posted by: Laminate Creasers | October 30, 2012 at 09:41 PM