Global law firm Withers has nearly doubled its office space in three California cities, providing evidence of the legal profession's affinity for return to work as companies across multiple industries are trimming their footprints in favor of hybrid and work-from-home models.

Law firms in major cities, though, have seen higher return-to-office rates than other industries since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, according to security technology firm Kastle Systems.

“The economy has changed and we’re trying to be smart about the fact that there are new expectations for how clients want to meet with attorneys and how attorneys need to interact with the courts,” Michael Brophy, partner and managing director in Withers’ Los Angeles office, told CoStar News.

Executives of the London-based firm, established in 1896 and now operating in 18 offices worldwide, said Withers last month moved into a 23,100-square-foot office at 10250 Constellation Blvd. in Los Angeles, more than doubling its prior 8,900-square-foot space at another building in the same Century City neighborhood.

This month, the firm opened a 14,000-square-foot office at 909 Montgomery St. in San Francisco, nearly doubling the square footage of its former nearby location.

And by early August, Withers expects to open a new 13,550-square-foot San Diego office at 3725 Paseo Place, combining two existing offices in that city into one central hub that is roughly equal in size but gives the firm space for expansion.

The new San Diego office is at developer Kilroy Realty’s recently completed One Paseo mixed-use development in Del Mar Heights, long among San Diego’s highest-demand and priciest office neighborhoods.

The law firm is investing significantly in the California office relocations and expansions but is not disclosing costs. Brophy said configuration of the space in Century City, among Los Angeles’ highest-rent office markets, was eased by the fact that it was previously used by another law firm.

Withers entered the California market in 2015 and has seen a steady rise in clients across numerous industries for its corporate, financial and estate services, including construction, hospitality, media, technology and the life sciences.

Rather than new desks and cubicles, the firm is devoting much of the added space to amenities designed to attract attorneys and their clients back to the office, with social lounges for clients and tech-enabled conference spaces configured for social distancing and set up to be booked in advance like hotel rooms.

Kastle Systems, which uses anonymous keycard data to track office usage at clients’ properties, reported this week that nationwide law firms in its seven-city Legal Barometer had office attendance at 78.4% of pre-pandemic levels for the week ending June 8, up 6 percentage points from the prior week.

That’s much higher than the general office figure, which was 44% for the same period, up 2.8 points from the prior week. Office usage has generally been trending up for the past year but has yet to crack 50% in most major cities.

Brophy said the added California space should give Withers flexibility to add workers in coming years, as it also revises its office footprints in other U.S. cities as leases come up for renewal. But the firm also figures that many current employees at its global offices, including about 130 in California, could be coming to the office just two or three days a week for the foreseeable future.

Schedules will depend on factors including the type of legal cases being handled, the necessity of lawyers to access regional courthouses and the location of its customers.

“We’ve chosen locations and office layouts that we also think will enhance our ability to closely collaborate with our clients,” Brophy said.

Here are the latest office-use figures for national law firms in seven cities tracked by Kastle Systems for the week ending June 8:

• Washington: 63.7%
• New York City: 70.2%
• Chicago: 87.1%
• Houston: 78.7%
• San Francisco: 75.3%
• Los Angeles: 81.3%
• Dallas: 92.2%

• Seven-City Average: 78.4%