Top level folders are considered 'Team Folders' which have different management limitations.
Long-term workaround within Dropbox would be to configure the top level Team Folders as something like:
CLIENTS (under this one you would nest _Archive and all current Top Level client Team Folders in here)
OFFICE (Accounting, Admin, HR, IT, etc.)
And then we can set custom permissions for those top level, then in Clients create the folder for each client.
This will allow for more granular permission settings that can be adapted for any file storage system/cloud solution.
As a general reference:
My default layout for folder nesting is:
Workarea (top level, can be business name or just workarea)
-Clients
(-_Archive, _Templates, -Client1, -Client2)
-Office
(-Accounting, -Admin, -HR, -IT, -Sales)