Editorial
Welcome to the Fall 2020 edition of Mattern Matters, the newsletter of Mattern. My name is Rob Mattern, President of Mattern, unbiased support services analysts and cost recovery experts.
Well, 2020 is continuing as the year that everyone wants to forget, but hopefully we are turning a corner. As I write this, the contentious election is over and there is good news on the vaccine front. I feel confident that the New Year and the next season should find us in a much better place.
On the Mattern front, things are busy and we continue to stay connected virtually with our LIVE! virtual Coffee Break Zoom sessions.
Seven Things Law Firms Should Do Now
As we enter the ninth month of the COVID-19 pandemic and firms continue to analyze the viability of the return to the office, it is now time to take some more permanent steps regarding your back and middle office services. All these steps outlined below should reduce your current costs 25% to 30% and, if done correctly, provide you the flexibility you will need.
The keyword to keep in mind is flexibility, not only over services, but obviously costs, all without losing the superior customer service that your end users need and are accustomed to. Possible? Yes, if done correctly.
Mattern Assists Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis LLP Achieve 49% Savings by Improving MFD Output Efficiencies
Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis LLP, an NLJ 500 firm headquartered in Nashville, was looking to upgrade its 189 printers in the most cost-effective way possible considering current obligations while also aligning any new configuration with the firm’s in-place multi-functional device (MFD) fleet. Since the majority (65%) of the firm’s output is printer-based, the right configuration was critical.
Digitization of Records: Should You Do it and When?
During the pandemic, Mattern has seen a sharp uptick in law firms attempting to address their off-site records programs. It makes sense; while this project is often set to the backburner, law firms have found time to address items such as off-site storage.
Mattern has found that the outcome that many firms wish to achieve is that of “paperless” or “paper light”. The benefits of going paperless or paper light are well documented, but the general idea underpinning it is that law firms want to stop sending money to off-site records providers for paper files
if they can avoid it. And on the other side of that same coin, they don’t want to send new paper off-site as that will just perpetuate the situation.
Mattern Helps Holland & Knight Reduce Current Costs by 34.5% and Permanent Withdrawal Fees by $1 Million While Incorporating Information Governance Goals
Holland & Knight, an Am Law 100 firm with 24 locations and 650,000 cubic feet of off-site records storage, had consolidated their off-site holdings with a national provider. While leadership was generally pleased with the services of their selected provider, it was unclear how their current pricing and contract terms stood up against the marketplace.
In addition, the firm’s leadership was in the process of implementing an Information Governance (IG) program and desired to drive down their off-site holdings as part of this and, as a result, sought: 1. An expert review of their IG policy and retention schedules to ensure all critical items were addressed and benchmarked against industry peer best practices, and 2. Ensure their contract terms aligned strategically with this policy as well as reflected the most competitive and cost-effective destruction costs
Mattern’s Outsourcing Marketplace
The world has changed, and every firm has an opportunity to rethink operations and make changes for the better. With so much movement in the outsourcing space, Mattern recognized the need for firms to efficiently obtain the most current trends, services and capabilities of the industry’s outsourcing providers. How can firms know what’s best if they are not up to date on trends, services and capabilities?
To that end, Mattern produced a unique “Outsourcing Marketplace” in conjunction with the COO CFO Forum in October to provide law firms an efficient way to gather current, industry-wide data from multiple service providers in a single session.
Outsourcing: Friend or Foe?
Company President, Rob Mattern, delivered this presentation at the 2020 COO CFO Forum. Here is an excerpt:
Why do firms outsource? Primary reasons are efficiency, expertise, flexibility and costs--but one of these alone does not stand well without the other. Altman Weil Law Firms in Transition Surveys from 2016 to 2019, state that less than 50% of firms indicated that there was a significant improvement in the operations of the outsourced services. Less than 50%. 20% of that 50% said that there was no improvement at all.
