Laurie Ollivent, a practice development lawyer at Linklaters, spends most of her working week at the law firm’s London headquarters on Silk Street in the Square Mile. But for a day or so each week, her firm pays for her to work from a rented desk at nearby Moor Place, run by WeWork, a fast-growing provider of office space on short leases. Like WeWork’s other offices across the capital, the vibe is far from that of a corporate law firm. Beer flows. There are often dogs padding around.

Moor Place is the kind of flexible office space most commonly associated with start-ups and small, scrappy, entrepreneurial companies. But Ollivent has decided that lawyers need a change of scene too.