DLA Piper Sets the Green Bar High- As Covered in Managing Partner Magazine

In the December/January issue of Managing PartnerMagazine (wwwmpmagazine.com) which is hot off the presses, Mattern & Associates’ consultant Brady Schoenrock co-authors an article with DLA Piper sustainability experts Elaine Radford and Jeff Harper to talk about DLA’s initiatives for sustainability and to raise the point that “going green” has real bottom-line benefits that go beyond being a good Samaritan.  The article is available to Managing Partner subscribers and can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/35l27tg. 

To quote from the article, “DLA Piper has set the global standard for law firms, taking corporate responsibility very seriously. There are four main areas that the DLA Piper Global Sustainability Initiative addresses: Energy, Waste/Recycling, Travel and Procurement.  Incorporating advice from experts such as support services consultants Mattern & Associates, the firm has aggressively mandated changes in these areas which have resulted in massive cost savings for the firm.  Long-term, sustainability is a money-saver, and there is real evidence to support this fact.”

For more information about green and sustainability strategies for your law firm, especially from an operations or support servicespoint of view, e-mail Brady at bschoenrock@matternassoc.com.

Do Alternative Fee Arrangements Really Lead to Better Value for the Client?

At last week’s COO & CFO Forum – Managing in the “New Normal”  hosted by The Hildebrandt Institute where we were a sponsor, the vast majority of the topics and discussions were centered on expense reductions, Alternative Fee Arrangements and the client’s perception of value. The speakers emphasized how Law Firms and Lawyers must be more like project managers, how law firms must be able to work under fixed fees, and how clients are getting away from the hourly billing model.  

After listening to this for one and half days I had to wonder if Law Firms were not looking at this in the wrong way. As a buyer of legal services, for simplistic, routine legal matters I would say a fixed fee is appropriate. However for more complex issues, or where there could be a long-term impact, is it? Do I want it to be knowing that the firm is going to minimize costs by having the lowest paid staff work on my matter in order to make a profit? I don’t think so.

I asked Jim Jones of Hildebrandt and Ann Trotter of Viacom (two of the presenters) whether there were any studies completed showing a correlation between fee arrangement and the success of the matter.   There are not and most information is anecdotal. Are clients taking a very short-term view that by reducing current legal spend, they are actually increasing their costs long-term by having less-favorable outcomes?  

If there was an area that should be studied, this is it. Anyone game?          

Realizing Your Realization

For many years, firms have tried to retain duplicating, print and scan work on-site.  One of the reasons for this was to maximize recovery revenue.  The reasoning went something like this: “we are paying for this equipment and people to run it, and we have a mechanism in place to capture these costs and charge them back to our clients.”  Firms would focus on driving billable volume, thus maximizing recovery. 

But recovery is not measured in billable volume alone.  Firms need to look at their “realization.”  In its simplest terms, “realization” refers to the amount a firm actually received from a client for these recoverable charges compared to the total amount of available recoverable charges.  Looking at increasing utilization of  “billable” client matter numbers is only one part of the equation.  If your attorneys and/or clients are writing off the charges, your overall recovery will suffer.

Mattern offers a wide variety of traditional and alternative cost recovery strategies designed to maximize not only your billable volumes, but more importantly, your realization percentages. Call or email for more information.

Reduce Printing Costs

What if you were made privy to a few simple steps that could save your firm a lot of money. Would you put them to use? Of course you would! Vince McHugh of The Connected Copier provides a few tips as to how you can do just that by implementing simple strategies to reduce your printing costs.

A few of Vince’s ideas include:

1) Set all of the MFDs to default to B&W

2) Set both the printing and the copying on your MFDs default to double sided

3) Implement Rules Based Printing allowing you to set rules to different printing situations

Click here to read McHugh’s entire post on ways to reduce your firm’s printing costs.