Intelligent Office: Three ways law firms can increase efficiency, productivity and profitability amongst support staff

At the centre of every law firm is a team of support staff, keeping the wheels turning and carrying out administrative tasks on behalf of fee earners and their teams. With the advent of predominantly digital document and administrative processes and widespread hybrid working, as a result of the pandemic, those tasks and the skills and resources firms need in support teams have been changing rapidly.

At the same time, firms also need to consider escalating costs and rampant inflation and ensure that their expenditure on support is controlled, proportionate and delivering value. That means constantly seeking ways to increase efficiency, productivity and, ultimately, profitability.

Intelligent Office is the market-leader for legal operation transformation; we support over 60 law firm offices with services including legal admin, reprographics, guest services, facilities management, document production and more. Our internal experts have put their heads together to identify our top three tips for achieving support service excellence:

1. Continuously Review and Improve Processes

We have experienced huge changes to the way we work over the last two years, and some practices and procedures are likely to now be outdated. Firms should conduct a thorough review of standard operating procedures for each task and identify if any improvements can be made and get into a habit of doing that regularly, on a much faster cycle than they would have done back in the last decade. With the pandemic forcing many businesses to take a ‘digital first’ approach, there may be opportunities to go paper-lite, for records to be scanned and originals kept offsite, with some firms already having implemented policies that stipulate that all matter files will be digital; with no hard-copy filing. Technology is constantly evolving, and firms should look to utilise this for long-term savings and maximising efficiency.

Process redesign isn’t rocket science and most firms will find they have some native talent and flair in this area. But, firms will often find those are their busiest people and there are a whole range of process and efficiency tools and methods that can be deployed to make the effort faster, easier and more productive. At Intelligent Office we are putting even more focus on these skills and tools and how we can deploy them to support our clients. Recently, we supported a UK Top 100 law firm client with moving to a new office building, reviewing key processes, and identifying several opportunities for improving efficiency, introducing paper-lite and a new digital mailroom. These processes complement hybrid working and increase access to files for fee earners, regardless of their location.

2. Upskill Staff and Create a Digital and Innovation Capable Team

The new legal world we are already working in demands some new skills, some of which have not been given priority or investment in previous years. Firms have sometimes been slow to invest in support staff training and development, but that will restrict the firm’s ability to adopt new practices and achieve new standards of efficiency.

By cross-training and upskilling staff, too, teams will be adaptable to fluctuating volumes and can provide cover during busy periods for support services such as reprographics and mail. Many firms are seeing an increase in office occupancy levels mid-week, with work volumes increasing significantly compared to Mondays and Fridays and cross-skilled teams can be much more agile and efficient.

At one UK Top 50 law firm client, Intelligent Office has upskilled and cross-trained all support teams to deal with the changing landscape of tasks being requested in the new agile environment. Tasks such as printing have decreased in volume, whilst scanning and reprographic work has increased by 14% compared to pre-pandemic records. With the type of work carried out by the support teams evolving, it is essential to keep skills and processes updated to allow for high-quality and efficient service delivery.

3. Rethink the Location Question

The pandemic has forced us to rethink how and where work can be carried out, and firms have seen benefits including cost savings and increased productivity from hybrid working. This is also true for law firm support, and at Intelligent Office we have seen a significant increase in demand for our offsite document production and legal admin services. Firms embracing agile work and seeking smart support solutions should consider the benefits of outsourcing.

IO’s ISO27001 accredited shared services centres offer remote support to firms of all sizes and are fully flexible, with prices starting at just £28 per hour. Whilst some of the largest global law firms have set up and operate their own ‘captive’ centres too, often in lower cost locations than the big, expensive legal centres, the cost and effort to set-up is prohibitive for all but the largest; therefore outsourcing administrative tasks to a third party via a shared services model can give firms greater flexibility with changing work volumes, can provide increased operating hours, and ensures they receive high quality support. Services that can now be provided very effectively offsite by IO include client and matter inception, invoicing, document production, legal admin, client onboarding, personal assistants and more.

Firms who take advantage of offsite support models can make cost savings on real estate; an ever more expensive element of firm overheads. One of our Top 20 UK law firm clients will make savings of £1.5million in the next five years as the result of moving their outsourced document production team to home-working and consolidating records to an offsite storage provider. Moving the team to permanent remote working generated real estate savings alone of almost £100,000 per year.