When clients visit lawyer Jim Palenchar at his LoDo office, they invariably remark that the place doesn’t look like a typical law firm. Maybe it’s the rock-climbing wall in the lobby.
“It’s more performance art than anything else, but people have climbed up on it,” said Palenchar, a senior partner in Denver with Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott.
Aside from giving the office a sense of place (Bartlit Beck’s Chicago office has a basketball court), the wall “is a teaching tool,” Palenchar said. “When you look at a climbing wall, there’s no one sure way up. There are a lot of different routes.”
Law firms are looking beyond wood paneling, marble floors and majestic views to convey their image and improve their game these days. They have large, high-tech conference and training centers, complex audio-visual systems and ornate mock courtrooms.
Moye White, also in LoDo, has a 1,160-square-foot, technologically equipped room for lawyer training, mediation sessions, seminars and other events, including the office Christmas party. Moye White recently hosted 100 people there for an international business conference.
The conference center has high-speed Internet and two separate visiting-lawyer workrooms with computers and phone lines that aren’t hooked into the firm’s network. The room can be transformed into a mock courtroom.
Moye White also has a fifth- floor patio where lawyers can use their laptops to connect to a wireless network.
“We like the fact we’re having all these people visiting our law firm,” said managing partner James Burghardt. “While they’re here, they’re seeing the rest of our facilities, they’re seeing our lawyers and our staff. We’re hoping that leaves a very positive impression with them about who we are and what we do.”
It’s a big space for a firm with 36 attorneys, but Moye White officials say it’s worth the investment. The firm moved into its offices, across from the Market Street Station, two years ago.
Moye White was able to negotiate favorable lease terms that made its new offices roughly comparable in price to similarly sized space in central downtown, said executive director Lorri Salyards. Retrofitting the space with new technology cost about $10,000, she said.
The largest U.S. law firms spend 4 percent to 6 percent of revenues on information technology, with smaller firms spending less, according to professional services consulting firm Hildebrandt International, a unit of Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson Corp.
Bartlit Beck, which has 20 lawyers in Denver, also has a large, open room called “the forum” that it uses for meetings, teleconferences, training, trial-graphics preparation, negotiations and mock trials.
Though Palenchar wouldn’t say how much Bartlit Beck’s improvements cost, he said the firm places a higher priority on people than on its physical surroundings, which he described as appealing but not ostentatious.
“I was proud of what we were able to accomplish in a very affordable manner,” he said.
Denver’s Holland & Hart has had a mock courtroom for 12 years. Next to it is a technology room where employees assist in mock trials and make graphics for cases going to trial. The room is being retrofitted with a new generation of technology, said Ken Broda-Bahm, senior litigation consultant for Holland & Hart.
The firm’s lawyers use the mock courtroom, located just off the main lobby, to sharpen their presentations, prepare witnesses, practice jury selection and hold focus groups and mock trials. Lawyer presentations and mock- jury deliberations are videotaped for review, Broda-Bahm said.
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at 303-820-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com.
