Opportunity:
This Am Law 100 firm with over 500 attorneys was outsourcing traditional office services and equipment in several offices as well as on-site digital and e-Discovery services with the same service provider. Although the outsourced employees working in the traditional office services department supported various services for the firm (i.e., reprographics, mail, hospitality, reception), the employees working in the digital and e-Discovery departments were only supporting this service area. The firm was paying a base management fee and a transactional fee for both departments.
Process:
After thoroughly assessing the firm’s digital and e-Discovery services (such as the number, type and complexity of the transactional work being performed, as well as the required equipment, technology, software and staffing required), Mattern recommended the firm consider implementing Mattern’s Plan B Cost Recovery™ method. This method would enable the firm to restructure their on-site support services as hard cost disbursements - maximizing billable cost recovery revenue and increasing net realization.
Result:
The firm acted on the recommendation and implemented Mattern Plan B. The service provider is still located on the firm’s premise but is no longer structured and billing for a management fee to cover staffing, equipment, technology, supplies, rent, etc.) – but only invoices the firm for an all-inclusive transactional fee for each task performed. Each service completed is billed to the firm as a “hard cost” third party invoice for a specific client matter. This not only allowed the firm an opportunity for increasing expense recovery – but they were able to significantly reduce overhead expenses by 28%.
The new Digital Services Center added additional capabilities that were previously performed by different groups within the firm. Transactional services provided are:
- Blowback printing
- Oversize printing
- Scanning
- OCR
- CD/DVD creation/duplication
- Hyperlinking
- File conversion
- Electronic bates
- Full-service processing
- Native Processing
- Pre-culling processing
- Thumb/flash drive creation/duplication
- Password cracking
- Technical time
