During a recent project team meeting, the topic of Conway’s Law was raised. Despite the wealth of useless trivia rattling around in my brain, I had to confess I had never heard of it. Credited to computer scientist Melvin Conway in the late 1960s, Conway’s Law states that “Organizations which design systems…are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” In other words, how organizations communicate directly influences the systems or products they produce.
Surviving the Test of Time
Conway’s Law was originally applied in the context of computer systems design. However, over time, it has been extended to emphasize the importance of organizational communication across industries. For example, Conway’s Law is cited as a factor in the development and success of Amazon’s “Two-Pizza” team organizational structure, which enabled employees to “stay close to customers and their needs, [and] rapidly launch innovative products and services on their behalf.” On the downside, Conway’s Law is also associated with research identifying organizational communication as a key culprit in Microsoft’s Vista operating system turning out as a bug-laden failure.
OK, so it seems fair to suggest that how an organization communicates can directly affect its performance. But what does that have to do with courthouse planning?
Conway’s Law in the Courthouse
I had to think about it for a bit, but I noticed a few connections. Perhaps most importantly, as a courthouse planner, I often focus on how the space within a courthouse either helps or hinders courts in performing their mission to serve the public by delivering justice. In assessing space, we often look at concrete, tangible attributes, such as whether spaces meet design standards or whether a courthouse contains proper circulation.
But what about Conway’s Law? Can the space within a courthouse actually affect organizational communication and, by extension, impact the quality of justice that the court delivers to the public?
Here are a few possible examples:
Judges’ Chambers that Promote Collaboration
Judges are obviously the key players in a courthouse, so let’s start with their space. Not all judges have law clerks, but those who do almost always want them to be close by, and for good reason. Judges need to continually interface with their clerks, exchanging ideas about the particulars of active cases, reviewing briefs, and ultimately weighing each case’s merits and crafting rulings and opinions.
- The most effective chambers layouts I have seen provide space that permits both private reflection and group collaboration for judges and their clerks.
- Law clerks often have dedicated space within the physical footprint of the judicial chambers suite.
- A single door leading to the (hopefully restricted) corridor is used by all occupants of the chambers suite, which promotes collaboration.
- This layout provides proximity to the judge and establishes the law clerks as valued members of the team, creating synergy.
In contrast, I have also seen situations where the law clerks are housed in separate offices, or perhaps a “bullpen” type area, remote from the judge’s chambers. The judge needs to summon his or her law clerk(s) from their office to the chambers to collaborate. The dynamic is different. The law clerk leaves his or her personal space, closes the door, travels to the judge’s space and perhaps needs to be granted entry. The sense is more formal and the meetings are often scheduled in advance.
In the more effective chambers layout, collaboration can occur spontaneously. Conway’s Law might suggest that the court’s performance benefits from judicial chambers layouts that enhance the judges’ communication with their law clerks.
Contiguous Clerk’s Offices
In many courthouses, the clerk’s office is a beehive of activity, the central focus of public interface while also housing a multidisciplinary team of staff members. As such, several attributes enhance the ability of team members to communicate among themselves and with leadership.
- Leadership typically requires hard-walled offices for private and sensitive discussions, but most staff use open workstations.
- Many clerks I’ve worked with are pleased with workstations with walls high enough to facilitate focused work but low enough to create openness and provide clear sightlines across the office area.
- Sightlines are especially important for managers who must visually monitor specific functions and staff members.
- As with judicial chambers, proximity is key. A contiguous layout is important for a clerk's office area and can affect organizational communication.
I have seen courts where the clerk’s office staff grew, but the office space did not. In some instances, the staff expansion is addressed by acquiring pockets of available space elsewhere in the courthouse. The result is a fragmented clerk’s office operation, where staff occupy two or more separate locations in the same building. This hinders organizational communication, particularly if there is a shortage of conference space for large and “all-hands” meetings. Fragmentation can create the sense of separate clerk’s offices and reduce synergy.
Conway’s Law suggests that the court’s performance would benefit from creating or restoring contiguous space in clerk’s offices. With courts increasingly adopting remote work policies, I have seen projects to successfully downsize and redesign clerk’s office spaces with remote work in mind, enabling the consolidation of fragmented spaces and staff.
These are a few examples of how Conway’s Law might apply to courthouse space and operations. I’m sure there are others, and perhaps some interesting counterpoints, such as probation officers whose focus is field supervision and who, therefore, may require little or no dedicated space in the courthouse.
Final Thoughts
In a way, Conway’s Law helps underscore the importance of courthouse planning and the unique perspective a courthouse planner can bring to a design team. Each court and court unit is different. As a result, the optimal arrangement of spaces to facilitate each unit’s specific type of organizational communication will also be different. Although design standards and space requirements are somewhat uniform, a wide range of layout options remains. A “one size fits all” approach to space programming and schematic design is not advisable.
I have heard judges and court managers complain about design teams on previous projects who came to the table already seeming to have all the answers. A good courthouse planner will have a broad knowledge base of best practices, but will recognize that each organization is unique. A planner’s role is initially to listen and learn via open dialogue before reaching conclusions. Conway’s Law is a good reminder that the impact of space on organizational communication should be a central part of that dialogue.
