William N. Shepherd partner with Holland & Knight. Courtesy photo

Holland & Knight is moving its downtown West Palm Beach office and adopting some of the latest trends in law firm office design, including same-sized offices for all attorneys regardless of seniority.

The firm is relocating from Esperante Corporate Center to Phillips Point's West Tower less than a block away and taking over the 19th-floor penthouse. The move was planned over the three-day Presidents Day holiday weekend with the new home opening Tuesday. Lease terms weren't released.

William Shepherd, a white-collar litigation partner who leads the West Palm Beach office, said the office got too big for its old space and expects more growth.

Early last year, the office added 12 insurance litigators from Akerman. The office with more than 20 attorneys is moving to a space that can accommodate 31.

"We've had some great growth in the last year, and we have outgrown the space frankly. We had lawyers doubled up in offices. We had people who were visiting from other offices as they are trying to service clients in the Palm Beaches who didn't have space, and we didn't have any room for growth," said Shepherd, a former statewide prosecutor.

There are no concrete hiring plans, but the firm expects to expand as greater West Palm Beach grows with new construction and new businesses. Two office towers are under construction, and two more are planned in an area that has been attracting biotechnology and financial services firms.

"We are looking to add practices and groups that will help us in the real estate area because I think that's a significant opportunity for this community," Shepherd said. "We have some transactional lawyers, but as more of this private equity base moves into this community, I think we want to bolster our really strong Miami efforts with some more local efforts to support that growth."

The firm designed its space from scratch with an architect's help in the tower built in 1985. Partners and associates will have same-sized offices with glass walls, a growing trend among firms as many no longer tie titles to office sizes and views.

"It just makes good business sense. My old office, I don't know when it was designed, but it was designed for a generation ago, and you could have had three lawyers' offices in my old office space. That's not helping our firm or our clients," Shepherd said.

The new space at 777 S. Flagler Drive will have built-in bookcases and stand-up desks in each office and staff workstation. Up to four internal team rooms will come with an idea wall for brainstorming sessions.

"It's like a white board dry-erase board, but it's the whole wall, and it's a special paint," Shepherd said.

A large conference room has two big screens connecting to all Holland & Knight offices, and two other conference rooms have four-way split-screen video capabilities.

"It really is a tremendous technological capability for us," he said. "In some ways you feel like you are at NASA with some of that stuff."

The firm on Thursday announced its first year with more than $1 billion in revenue. Growth at the 1,212-attorney firm should push it up in the Am Law 100 rankings after landing at 43 last year.

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