Fall 2019 Editorial

Hello, I’m Rob Mattern, President at Mattern. Welcome to the Fall 2019 edition of Mattern Matters.

Meet the Consultant – Nathan Curtis

We are thrilled to continue our “Meet the Consultant” series. In this edition we invite you to learn more about Consultant, Nathan Curtis. Nathan brings over 20 years of experience working with law firms in the U.S. and overseas in developing industry-first solutions across Information Governance, Litigation Support, Digital Imaging, and traditional Office Services.

For over 21 years Nathan sat on the service provider side of the negotiations table. This provides him with unparalleled insight to push certain terms and conditions through their Legal Department as well as pricing concession approvals with their leadership. Nathan shares some of his background as well as a preview of an information governance white paper he recently authored for ILTA.

What’s the Deal with Litigation Support and e-Discovery?

Do you ask yourself:

— What percentage of firms outsource their litigation support/e-Discovery operation?

— What percentage of firms supply in-house labor to their litigation support operation?

— What is the average recovery rate of hosted data and what percentage do firms actually recover?

–What percentage of firms do not recover any of the cost associated with litigation support or e-Discovery?

These are great questions and we have the answers! This summer, Mattern launched the 2019 e-Discovery and Litigation Support Cost Recovery Survey, the legal industry’s first measurement of the cost recovery practices across areas of litigation support and e-Discovery–including data hosting, load file creation, OCR and project management hourly rates.

We recently closed the Survey and are compiling the results. Only firms that participated will get the full results, but you can get an overview of the findings – just send an email to info@matternassoc.com requesting the Lit Support Overview and we will send it to you once the results are published.

BONUS: We have included an article from our IG/Records Guru, Nathan Curtis, which originally appeared in September’s Law Journal Newsletters: “Litigation Support, e-Discovery and the Recovery of Costs.”

Offsite Records – The Time to Reevaluate is Now

Risk and regulatory and compliance needs rank among the top concerns of Chief Legal Officers—and so too, of law firms. Law firms possess vast stores of electronic and hard copy client information, going back years, sitting in vaults with various vendors all over the country or on electronic records management systems (RMS) and document management systems (DMS).

Would your firm’s on and offsite records situation pass a client audit with flying colors? We have provided two articles that will help you rethink your records storage situation as well as a checklist that will guide you on your consideration of taking on a large destruction project for your offsite storage.

Finally, we have included an offsite records success story from a recent engagement with Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Aughtry. Mattern helped the firm achieve a $0 permanent withdrawal fee and 40% savings with a new offsite records vendor.

Company News

Welcome to the Team

A big welcome to Elizabeth (Libby) Quillman who joined the Mattern team as Office Manager this past August! Libby brings a wealth of marketing experience to the Mattern team and spent the last ten (10) years in education. Welcome aboard.

A Changing Marketplace – How to Stay Ahead of the Curve

The outsourcing and output (MFD’s and printers) marketplaces are undergoing a terrific amount of change. National players are abandoning certain marketplaces while regional players are servicing accounts nationally. To address these changes, Mattern is proud to announce that in 2020 we will start a series of white papers on each market segment. These whitepapers will be available to interested parties. More details about this will come in our Winter edition of Mattern Matters – stay tuned!

Upcoming Webinars

Offsite Records— On November 13th we will be presenting “Negotiating the last offsite contract(s) your firm will ever need” at 12 pm ET. If there is one area that we see firms struggle with on a day-by-day basis it is the financial and operational handcuffs they operate under in connection to their offsite records storage contracts. This webinar will show you how to create a strategy and implement it to restructure your offsite contracts to benefit your firm. We invite you to attend this webinar, register here.

Outsourcing— On December 12th we will be presenting “Outsourcing– Do you accept mediocrity in your outsourcing contracts?” at 12 pm ET. Unfortunately, we see a common trend with firms not thrilled with their outsourcing service providers’ performance, pricing and terms. There is no reason this dissatisfaction should occur. This webinar will outline ways to dramatically improve your outsourcing situation and whether outsourcing is even the right solution for your firm.

Goodbye and Good Luck

Lastly, the team at Mattern wants to wish the best of luck to Lisa Dady who recently left Epiq. Lisa is an industry veteran who has been in the business as long as Mattern has been in existence. A consummate professional, she will be missed. Lisa enjoy yourself.

Until the Winter edition,
Rob Mattern

2019-11-06T15:14:37+00:00