Mattern Matters Fall 2021 Editorial

Mattern Matters Fall 2021 Editorial 2021-11-11T22:16:20+00:00

Welcome to the Fall 2021 edition of Mattern Matters.  My name is Rob Mattern, and I am the President of Mattern

With so much change, 2021 is a year that has gone surprisingly fast, and we now find ourselves in the season of gratitude. Gratitude is one of our key pillars at Mattern, and this year we are even more grateful for our clients, colleagues and the industry that we have dedicated our careers to.  We are grateful for the resiliency of law firms and congratulate our peers on a great year—even a record-breaking year for some.

Though it’s too early for the holidays, I think you will find a number of “gifts” in this edition of Mattern Matters.

We start off with an excerpt from our most recent whitepaper, “How to Outsource in a Post-COVID World – A Guide from Mattern.”  Law firms are at a crossroads. Most firms are looking to reengineer the delivery of legal services and looking to outsourcing as a tool that supports their new, strategic vision.  Our white paper explores how to do this well in a post-COVID world, why few firms realize a significant increase in performance (only 37.1%) when they do it, and what to do about it.

One of the key factors in outsourcing for success is having an unbiased approach that ensures the decisions are in the firm’s best interest. To that end, we provide three great case studies that illustrate how some of our clients have strategically leveraged outsourcing. The first case study features an Am Law 100 firm that, going against market trend, brought their outsourced services back in-house with great success and $1 million in savings. Contrasting to this, we showcase Dickinson Wright which greatly improved their pricing, terms, and vendor performance of their outsourcing operation, also capturing $1million in savings. The last case study features an Am Law 25 firm outsourcing their in-house services again with great success.

This fall also saw Mattern release some new market data from our 2021 Cost Recovery and Hybrid Law Firm Operations Survey.  We were pleased that the data was featured in The American Lawyer and are happy to include that article here.  The Executive Overview of the results is available here.

As you can see by our case study examples, law firms can achieve success in their operations whether in-house or outsourced.  It means doing it right and making sure the assessments are unbiased.  That’s why we have included a short piece on understanding bias when hiring a consultant.  As more firms turn to outsourcing to improve efficiencies and reduce expenses, we discuss why it makes sense to have expertise on your side of the table in this important exercise.     

In every issue, we like to put a spotlight focus on a Mattern expert.  In this issue, the spotlight is on yours truly.  I was a little reluctant because I prefer to highlight the successes of others, but I hope you enjoy it in any case.

In closing, I am the first one to be critical when stores bypass Thanksgiving in a rush to get to Christmas, so I would be remiss not to give the Thanksgiving holiday its due.  I think even more so this year, we as a people have so much to be thankful for with a light at the end of the tunnel in regard to the pandemic.

Hopefully with the end of this terrible time behind us, we can start to heal and move forward together to tackle the multitude of issues that confront us. Which I am confident we will.

Until next time,

Rob