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Going freelance solves a lot of problems at once. You pick the clients, you set the rates, and nobody schedules a 4pm meeting about more meetings.

What it doesn’t solve is where you work. The kitchen table is free, which is its main quality. It’s also where the laundry lives, where the broadband drops out mid-call, and where you can’t reasonably ask a client to sign anything.

For freelance solicitors, accountants, consultants and anyone else whose work is portable but whose clients aren’t, here’s what tends to work instead.

If you’re a solicitor or legal consultant

Most of your week doesn’t need an audience. Drafting, reviewing, correspondence – that can happen anywhere with a decent connection and no interruptions. It’s the other few hours that are the problem: the client who needs to sign something, the conversation that can’t happen over Teams, the meeting where the room itself is quietly doing half the reassuring.

Which is the bit most people get backwards. You don’t need a permanent client-facing room. You need a very good one, occasionally – and somewhere sensible to do the rest of the work in between.

A desk for the quiet hours. “Anywhere with a decent connection” turns out to be harder to find than it sounds – home has the door-knockers and the laundry, cafés have the noise and the person reading over your shoulder.

At The Workplace, a day pass is £25, or sign up for a rolling coworking plan if you’re in most weeks. Secure Gigabit WiFi, sit/stand desks, free printing (within reason), soundproof phone booths for private calls, and variable access for the deadline that lands at six on a Friday.

Book a room, not a building. Then, for the hours that need a table and a door, our meeting rooms start at £15 + VAT per hour and seat anywhere from 1 to 12 – so a one-to-one client consultation, a mediation, a witness statement and a full partners’ meeting all have somewhere to happen, and you only pay for the hours you actually use. Our coworking plans include meeting room credits for either the Zoom Room (for 1-1 consults) or the Planning Place, which seats 6 and is fully equipped with everything you need for your meeting to go smoothly.

If you’re an accountant, bookkeeper, or financial adviser

Your calendar isn’t linear. There are weeks where you need to put your head down and grind through returns, and weeks where you’re sitting across a table from someone explaining a number they don’t much like. You need somewhere that does both.

Coworking for the heads-down half. A day pass is £25 – just bring your laptop – or take a rolling coworking plan if you’re in regularly. You get superfast, secure WiFi, ergonomic chairs and sit/stand desks, the BEST bean-to-cup coffee, and variable access for when self-assessment season stops respecting office hours.

Meeting rooms for the client half. Book by the hour when you need a door and a table, from £15 + VAT. Our coworking plans come with some meeting room credits included, so the client-facing side of the job is often already sorted.

And the bit people don’t expect: you’ll be sitting in a building full of freelancers, agencies and growing teams. Every one of them needs an accountant, and a fair few are currently making do with one they never quite chose. We don’t promise referrals. We do notice how often they happen by the kettle.

The bit that applies to both accountants and solicitors

You’re both selling the same underlying thing: trust. Someone is handing over their money or their legal problem, and a good chunk of that decision gets made before either of you has said anything substantive.

That’s the real argument here. Not the coffee, not the plants, not the dog asleep by the sofa – though we’d happily argue for all three. It’s that looking established is now something you can book by the hour, instead of buying with a five-year lease and a fit-out budget.

But if you are looking for a private office?

We have serviced offices of varying capacity. Some practices do reach the point where hourly booking stops making sense – usually when you’ve hired someone, or when the paper files have opinions about where they live.

If that’s you, we have furnished private offices from £350 +VAT, per desk per month -fully inclusive, on rolling monthly contracts, with no deposits and no long-term tie-in.

You also get full control over how it looks. As long as you’re not knocking down walls, you can set it up to match your brand rather than ours.

What’s included

• Superfast, secure Gigabit WiFi
• Ergonomic, high-quality chairs and desks
• Weekly cleaning
• Meeting room credits with your plan
• 24/7 access and security
• A prestigious business address, with mailbox services available
• Bookable parking at Star Lodge (£6 per day)
• Access to a fully-equipped communal kitchen

Community-oriented. We organise monthly pub outings and weekly Cake Wednesdays – plus we’re also very dog-friendly.

Sustainability focused. We’re a certified B Corp and have been since December 2024 – useful to be able to point at when clients start asking about your own supply chain.

Inclusive, transparent pricing. No hidden fees. You pay the all-inclusive bill, plus parking or meeting rooms only if they’re booked on top of your plan’s credits.

Whether you need a room for an hour, a desk for the day, or somewhere to put a growing practice, come and have a look first. Book a tour of our Cheltenham locations today – we can usually show you round straight away, and membership is often available immediately.