Jackson Walker's new, two-story San Antonio office features floor-to-ceiling windows and stunning views of the city. Courtesy photo

Four years after Jackson Walker lawyers began to think about moving the firm San Antonio office, the office relocated to space in a new building, The Jefferson Building at 1900 Broadway, located north of downtown in the Pearl District, the end product of a lengthy evaluation process slowed by the pandemic. The new office on two floors of the brand–new building has floor-to-ceiling windows, a conference center that includes a video conferencing studio, collaborative spaces, lounge seating, coffee rooms, shared open spaces for staff, and 60 uniformly sized offices for lawyers. Its design reflects San Antonio, said Julia Mann, managing partner of the office, and as part of the firm's commitment to the city, the firm will allow community organizations to use large rooms in the office for events. The office even has a conference room reached through a "secret door" that looks like a wall. With 46 lawyers in the office, the new space will accommodate growth. The Am Law 200 firm has been in San Antonio for more than three decades. U.S. law firm leasing activity in 2023 is up from the prior year as firms decided to update their current offices or move into new spaces that feature the latest technology and efficient design. Mann said they hadn't thought much about moving to a new building when the firm's lease was set to expire this year, until the opening of The Frost Tower in 2019 raised that possibility. It was the first skyscraper to open in the Alamo City downtown for a decade. That led to a process to determine where the lawyers wanted the San Antonio office to be located for the next two decades, Mann said. "We came to the conclusion that one of the big things we were looking for was a new-construction building that would allow us the ability to finish out the space exactly how we wanted to," she said. After considering a few options, the firm signed the lease with 1900 Broadway in December 2021, at a time when the building was still under construction. They spent 2022 "refining and preparing" for construction and working with Gensler on design, but finishing out the space did not begin until January, she said. "We made sure that what we are building would last, would take into consideration how work has changed," she said. Attorneys at Jackson Walker are expected to work in the office, although staff may work from home one day a week, Mann said, so the new design provides multiple locations for work, including each attorney's private office, but also flex rooms and collaborative areas providing "some of that homey environment that you might miss when not working at home." As firms have different policies for remote work following the pandemic, with many in Big Law moving to a required four days a week in the office, Mann said Jackson Walker has no official work-from-home policy and the default is to work in the office with the goal of promoting in-person interactions. Mann said attendance has been up since the firm moved into the new space, a process that began in July even before the build-out was complete, and stretched over many weeks. "People really seem to really enjoy coming to our space. My favorite part of the space is there's great views everywhere. The best view is [from] our break room, The Trinity — you can see Trinity University and Breckenridge Park," she said. The firm signed a 10-year lease with an option to extend it. The location in the Pearl District is good for clients, Mann said, because it's easily accessible with plenty of on-site parking. Mann, managing partner of the office since February 2019, said the she and a team in the office made many of the design selections. "Because of that, we were able to make this office really San Antonio. As you know, Texas is such a big state, [so] what things look like here are very different from Houston of Dallas," she said.