Situated directly opposite the Royal Courts of Justice, LentaSpace Thanet House is the perfect location for legal practises, chambers and organisations. Flexible workspace isn’t traditionally the natural choice for legal companies, so we spoke with Chambers Director Julia Hornor, of LentaSpace client Blackstone Chambers to find out how it worked for them.
Blackstone Chambers are a leading chambers specialising in commercial, employment, EU, public/administrative and human rights law. Based in Temple they were looking for a temporary home during the refurbishment of their office, Blackstone House.
So, why did Blackstone Chambers choose Thanet House? Working locally, Julia already knew of the building, “We decided to view a few options locally through an office broker, however, we soon found that the quality of office on short term lease wasn’t what we needed. In comparison, Thanet House is well fitted out and easy to use. Plus, the location worked for us. Being opposite the Royal Courts of Justice made Thanet House the perfect location for us. Its clean, modern and secure.”
The location also worked for them in terms of commuting, being just 3-4 minutes’ walk from Temple and 10 minutes’ walk from Chancery Lane London Underground stations and close to Charing Cross and Blackfriars train stations.
The flexibility of the licence agreements offered by LentaSpace was a real benefit from Julia’s perspective, “We originally took the space for five months, whilst our chambers were being refurbished, but ended up extending for a further two months on a rolling agreement basis, as works were delayed.”
Blackstone were also able to benefit from the ability to flex up and down their office size as their project progressed, “We took a core space of 21 desks across two offices, but increased that occasionally to house additional staff.” The Thanet House offices were mainly used by the Chambers’ admin team, for whom the open plan space worked well, whilst Blackstone’s Barristers remained in their original office, as they needed private offices to see clients. If Blackstone had committed to a longer licence agreement, LentaSpace would have built in more offices for them.
Data privacy was initially an area of concern for Blackstone when using a shared workspace. “Data security is very important to us, but the LentaSpace technical team here supported us to install our own router and firewall to connect with our VPN to maintain that – it was very simple to do.”
The building’s amenities made the team’s stay more comfortable:
• The kitchen and breakout space on our floor, adjacent to our office making it feel as though we had our own self-contained unit.
• The bookable meeting rooms were great for occasional use, when we needed them.
• The large 5th floor breakout space with outdoor terrace was popular with the team to eat lunch.
• Secure keyless 24-hour access with Salto Systems enabled the team to work their usual long hours, 8am-7pm.
As with so many services the proof of whether a client is happy, is when they are asked if they would recommend them to someone-else. “We have referred others legal companies to Thanet House, at the request of our landlords, who asked for a recommendation, which we were happy to give.”