The Law Society Worksmart Project

We worked with Contractor Sykes and Son Ltd to deliver the Law Society’s 2020 Worksmart Project at 113 Chancery Lane, a Grade II* listed building in Central London. 

The project involved a compre­hensive remodelling of the building’s workspaces, breakout areas and circulation routes across six floors, along with internal services upgrades and external roof plant replacement. The project aimed to create a much more open and attractive working environment by remodelling internal spaces and re-organising the proportions and locations of desk space and formal meeting space within the building as a whole. The scheme also introduces new informal working, touchdown and break out spaces, and a much greater sense of trans­parency and legibility into parts of the building that formerly contained a warren of closed off and separated departments.

The project provides more than 400 agile workspaces, sitting comfortably within the wide range of different back of house staff areas at 113 Chancery Lane, itself an extraordinary agglom­er­ation of several different phases of building over the past 190 years, including the original building by Lewis Vulliamy of 1831 with a significant contri­bution by Charles Holden in 1902-04. Principal spaces include the famous Law Society Library, and the Reading Room and Common Room, both spectacular events venues that together with other fine rooms and meeting spaces, continued to operate through the two phases of construction work up until the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. The work continued throughout the pandemic and despite this challenge was completed at the end of 2020.