The lunch area in Dinsmore's new Chicago office space. Photo: David Thomas/ALM

The framed jersey of Boston Red Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi was sitting on the floor of Robert Lucas' new corner office when he pointed it out.

"You like baseball?" asked Lucas, the managing partner of Dinsmore & Shohl's Chicago office, who goes by Bobby. He went on to explain that the Red Sox outfielder is the son of Christopher Benintendi, who chairs the Cincinnati-based firm's workers' compensation practice.

The jersey was still waiting to be hung because both Lucas and Dinsmore have stayed on the move since the firm's arrival in Chicago five years ago—resettling offices twice while growing and putting down roots in the city.

Dinsmore has grown its ranks in Chicago from five lawyers to almost 30 since 2014, not including staff. It first relocated in October 2014, to the 38th floor of the north tower of the Franklin Center, and then again Oct. 14, to a new, custom-built office space on the 34th floor of the Franklin Center's south tower.

Bobby Lucas, Dinsmore (Courtesy photo)

At roughly 23,000 square feet, Dinsmore's new office space boasts a larger conference room and a kitchen that is flooded with natural light. The office has 46 offices—15 of which are currently empty—and Dinsmore has the ability to rent out space a floor below them.

"It's a much larger market than anywhere we had been before," Lucas said. "The reality is, there's no magic number of people that's the right size, but you can't adequately capture your place in that market if you only have four people."

Dinsmore appears to be bucking the trend, if a new report from CBRE is any indication. The real estate firm on Monday found that roughly two-thirds of the real estate transactions law firms made between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019, reduced their overall office space. Dinsmore's old office was roughly 14,000 to 15,000 square feet.

On the other hand, Dinsmore's new space illustrates another trend that's been highlighted by CBRE: Decreased square footage per lawyer. Although he didn't have specific numbers, a Dinsmore attorney said the individual offices in the firm's new location are smaller than their prior one.

Lucas said he's looking to build out its Chicago office, especially adding lawyers or practice groups who can offer more specialized services than what the office can currently do.

"What we don't have is the depth and the breadth in which somebody knows every single specialty within those practice areas, but at the broadest area, we're able to say, for the most part, we have folks in Chicago who can handle that," Lucas said.

Lucas, who also leads Dinsmore's corporate department, said he's more concerned about bringing in "the right people"—regardless of whether they're associates or lateral partners—than bringing in practice groups. Lucas described himself as being "practice-group agnostic."

Dinsmore first gained a foothold in Chicago in March 2014, when it merged with Peck Shaffer & Williams, a boutique public financing firm. Peck had just one lawyer in Chicago. Lucas and three others joined in April 2014. Their first office was in the Field Building.

Lucas had worked in Dinsmore's Cincinnati office for four years until he and his wife moved to Chicago in 2005. He joined Thompson Coburn and made partner; when Dinsmore's merger with Peck happened, the firm reached out to the then-38-year-old Lucas and asked him to become the Chicago office managing partner.

"The day the merger was announced, I got emails from a couple friends at the firm saying 'Hey, we have a Chicago office now.' I half-jokingly responded, 'Are you hiring?' And they said, 'Yes, actually, that's why we're reaching out,'" said Lucas, now 43.

After a few lateral hires, "we were busting at the seams" in the Field Building, Lucas said, recalling on how he had to share an office with one of his partners and how they had to take turns talking on the phone.

Dinsmore has seen its top-line revenue grow year after year, although the percentage of revenue growth has decreased from a whopping 12.3% in 2015 to just 3.1% last year, according to ALM data.

The firm's revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner have seen positive growth since 2017, apparently recovering from the slip Dinsmore saw after it merged with three small firms in 2015: Huddleston Bolen in West Virginia; Gifford, Krass, Sprinkle, Anderson & Citkowski in Michigan; and Leventhal Law in San Diego.

A spokesman later said that, in the weeks since The American Lawyer toured Dinsmore's office, Benintendi's jersey was hung on the wall.