Law Firms Add Value while Reducing Cost of Legal Services
From the Austin Business Journal:
While many in economically dinged industries have attempted to improve performance and lower prices during a recession, the legal industry is doing so this time.
Seeking to hold and grow business amid one of the nation’s darkest economic recessions, law firms are making client-focused changes to their services, billing practices and communications, according to a white paper issued late last year by legal placement agency Robert Half Legal.
The white paper, “Future Law Office: Delivering Value-Added Legal Services in Challenging Times,” says law firms “are fortifying active practice areas, focusing on strengthening their relationships with existing clients and increasing marketing outreach to new prospects.”
In the report, Larry Bodine, a business development adviser based in Glen Ellyn, Ill., and editor of Larry Bodine LawMarketing Blog, said the top priority in the current economy “is to keep the clients you’ve got. Customer service is the way to do it.”
Chief among such efforts, the report says, have been alternative billing that help clients predetermine legal budgets.
For in-house legal departments that hire outside firms when necessary, there has been an increased emphasis on cost containment and predictability that firms have responded to, said Bridgette Roman, general counsel at Dublin, Ohio-based Checksmart Financial Co.
“In the last 12 to 18 months we’ve instituted project-based billing and put out requests for proposals,” Roman said. Those strategies have helped contain costs and have been accepted by firms, she said.
Meanwhile, Roman said she has been scrutinizing periodic budget reviews more closely, and the firms she works with have come to expect that scrutiny.
Employing creative solutions to reduce costs has been one of the strategies used by Columbus, Ohio-based firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, said Robert “Buzz” Trafford, the firm’s managing partner.
For example, Trafford said when Porter Wright is working on litigation that can require reviewing of thousands of documents, it will employ outside companies to do so. By outsourcing this relatively mundane task, a client pays less than if a Porter Wright lawyer conducted the review.
Other money-saving solutions are possible by using technology, Roman said. In one case, Checksmart worked with a law firm to establish an Extranet system that created a central point of access for all case documents, accessible only by Checksmart and the law firm. It enabled Roman to closely monitor the case’s progress and provide outside counsel with documents they might otherwise need to reproduce.
While firms have improved client relations during the recession, corporate counsel surveyed by Robert Half said more effective communication, rather than just more communication, is an area where there could be greater refinement.
