Law firms signed for their highest volume of office space on record in the first half of this year, leading the corporate charge that has finally started to chip away at the ocean of available U.S. office space.
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Businesses in the legal profession signed leases for 12.2M SF of office space through June, a 17% year-over-year jump, following a record 7.3M SF in the second quarter alone, according to a new report from Cushman & Wakefield. Expansions by leading legal practices made up the majority of the deals signed, with demand spilling out of New York City and Chicago into smaller markets.
Leasing activity by the legal sector accounted for 14% of total demand in 10 of the biggest office markets tracked by Cushman & Wakefield's second-quarter report, which linked the number of deals inked by law firms to artificial intelligence firms’ voracious appetite for growth.
Legal leasing is on pace to easily set a new record and surpass 2025’s total of 18.8M SF. The second quarter's activity was 23% above the previous recorded high set in Q4 2024, according to Cushman.
The growth in the sector has helped drive absorption — the net change in occupied space — to positive 14.3M SF over the past 12 months, according to Cushman.
The increased legal sector leasing during the quarter was also accompanied by investor bullishness in the U.S. economy.
Corporate profits surged 9.1% quarter-over-quarter in the U.S., according to an analysis by data firm Haver Analytics, while U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data showed consumer spending driving annualized GDP growth to increase by 1.5% during Q2.
Law firms have seen revenues soar, Reuters reported. Firms reported revenues increasing by an average of 12.4% in the first half of 2026, up from an 11.2% increase in the first six months of last year.
Those increases drove robust demand for space from some of the largest law firms in the U.S.
AmLaw 100 firms signed nine of the 10 biggest leases of the quarter, driving the majority of demand for space. And after years of contractions in the sector driven by remote work and the digitization of legal libraries, 43% of all deals signed year-to-date were expansions.
New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago together accounted for 52% of law firm leasing during the quarter. Law firms signed 2.2M SF of leases in NYC alone, 30% of all activity in the report.
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