🔒Here’s what’s driving Robinson+Cole’s major downtown Hartford office move

Downtown Hartford’s office leasing market has been relatively quiet since the pandemic hit more than two years ago.

But a major move was recently announced by law firm Robinson+Cole, which is relocating out of 280 Trumbull St., where it has been based for four decades, to the historic Hartford Steam Boiler building at One State St., in September 2023.

As part of the move, Robinson+Cole will reduce its footprint from 120,000 square feet on six floors to 75,000 square feet on five top floors at State Street.

The building is owned by Hartford Steam Boiler, which has long ties to the law firm. At the age of 21, Lucius F. Robinson, the firm’s founder, set up a one-man law office on State Street in 1845. His younger brother, Henry C. Robinson, later joined the firm and was a director of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co. In addition, his son, Lu Robinson, would later also serve as a director of Hartford Steam Boiler’s board.

The State Street site will be the sixth Hartford location in the law firm’s 177-year history, and its representative of the evolving way companies think about and use office space amid the rise of the hybrid work model.

The relocation also comes as Robinson+Cole is undergoing a growth spurt that’s held steady through the pandemic. It now has 220 employees in the city, including lawyers and staff. Firmwide it has about 450 employees with offices throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Florida and California.

Rhonda Tobin leads Robinson+ Cole as managing partner. She recently chatted with Hartford Business Journal about what’s driving the office move and her views on the future of work.

Here’s what she had to say:

Why is the firm choosing to move its offices?

A: We’ve been in our current building for 40 years. It’s been a great home for us in Hartford but with the lease coming up in a couple of years it was a good time even pre-pandemic to look at space needs and our amenities and start thinking a little more about what our offices ought to look like in the future.

And then COVID hit and we came out of it in a hybrid work model, which I think we will be in for the foreseeable future, if not forever. So we layered that on, trying to figure out what does this all mean from a technology standpoint, utilization standpoint and how does that impact the way we recruit and retain people.

We viewed it as a perfect opportunity to shrink our space, revisit how we use our space and really plan for the next generation of the law firm.

Did you start this process earlier then you normally would have, or was this the typical time frame?

A: We started earlier for a couple of reasons. One was because there aren’t that many buildings that can accommodate what we are looking for, both the square footage that we need and the place we would like to be, which is called the top of the stack, or top of the building, and that has the type of amenities we are looking for.

We all know there hasn’t been that much construction of new commercial space in Hartford over the last 40 years. We gave ourselves a longer lead time so we could have some choices.

We ended with two excellent choices, to stay where we are and renovate in place, or move to One State Street. We did look at other buildings but those are the two that met what we really needed.

Was your search contained to downtown Hartford, or did you look outside the city as well?

A: I would say we only looked in downtown Hartford. We did have some partners that raised other options outside of Hartford, which were interesting and could have been entrepreneurial, but we decided it was our commitment to stay in the city, being here since 1845.

We really take seriously our role as a corporate citizen here in Hartford and we are very tied to the community.

You mentioned that the office space will be designed to accommodate the hybrid workplace and move away from the traditional model. What does that entail?

A: I think one of the key components that we decided was that we are going to go to single-size offices for our lawyers, which does enable us to shrink our footprint a little bit.

Gone are the days with partners with big offices and fancy furniture and all of that.

This gives us a little uniformity. It also gives us flexibility, which has been a key buzzword for this whole process. We are not going to build a mock trial room that gets used 10 times a year. Instead, let’s build some conference space that can flex into a mock trial room.

We are trying to think about from a hybrid perspective how many days a week people are going to be in the office. Should we be thinking about same-size offices, some type of shared space or hoteling concept? Will we go to hoteling at some point?

I don’t think we will do that at the outset in terms of people reserving offices. We are currently contemplating that everyone would have their own office, but again everything is flexible. Every office will be single size so we can really adopt to the changes in our population and how many people are coming into the office.

What we really need is more collaboration space, having people’s offices be there home base for quiet time for phone calls and work, but really encouraging people when they are interacting with others to do it outside their offices and building space throughout to make sure people can collaborate in a seamless manner.

What we don’t want to do, which a lot of law firms have right now, is have a lot of empty, unused space.

Can you talk about how technology will be integrated into the space?

A: Technology for hybrid meetings is really important. We are talking about creating Zoom rooms with smart galleries. That allows everybody, whether they are sitting inside the office or outside the office, to have a Zoom box, as opposed to now where the traditional technology shows a conference room full of people around the table and then some people in Zoom boxes.

We are planning to have some digital scheduling options for some flex space. We have been working for several years to digitize all of our records so we won’t have a need for file rooms, which traditionally took up a lot of space for law firms. We are digitizing our library needs, reducing our needs for that type of space.

We are also thinking about more creative things. Like glass walls are really popular right now, but there is something called electric switchable glass where it can be clear glass but you can also flip a switch and it turns into frosted glass, providing some confidentiality. We are a law firm, mostly everything we do is confidential, so preserving that confidentiality is really important.

What amenities attracted you to the Hartford Steam Boiler building?

A: The building has long been known to have a great cafeteria, it has an on-site restaurant (ON20, which is currently undergoing a renovation), it has abundant private, secure, parking in the building, a fitness center that is being renovated, and a daycare center on-site.

Having an owner-occupied building is also a great advantage because Hartford Steam Boiler owns the building and has their people there, so keeping the building maintained is a high priority for them.

How has the pandemic changed your view on how people work?

A: We spent two years working remotely and then we came back to the office in March on a hybrid model. We are asking people to come into the office two to three days a week. Our staff is coming in two to three days a week as well. That has been really well received.

We did give all of our staff the chance to work remotely this summer on Fridays, but coming back after Labor Day we are looking forward to people coming in on that regular two- to three-day schedule.

The legal industry has really embraced the hybrid model and it is a competitive market for talent right now so we need to be mindful of what other firms are doing as well. This hybrid model seems to be the most attractive to our talent.

And it’s not just about keeping our existing talent, we are in a growth mode both here in Hartford and all of our markets. To be able to recruit the best talent, that hybrid model and flexibility seems to be very well received.

We are encouraging people to be in. We aren’t mandating it. We aren’t monitoring it for our lawyers, but I think the way that we did it in terms of a slow roll, was effective.

I think flexibility is really key to be successful.

You mentioned Robinson+Cole is in growth mode. Can you elaborate on that?

A: We are in the third year of a three-year strategic plan and one major prong of that is focused on growth, both geographic and really trying to deepen our strength in some of our noteworthy practices.

We continue to look for lateral talent in Hartford and Connecticut as well as all of our markets. We’ve grown during the pandemic with a lot of lateral hiring. We are in a really financially stable place to be able to do that.

Are you looking at potential acquisitions, or focused more on new hiring and organic growth?

A: It’s kind of the gamut. What we are not really interested in is a merger. We really feel strong about where we are and where we are headed.

We do look at some smaller firms or groups as a potential combination. But we are not looking for a merger of equals or to be acquired.