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Legal Services Case Studies
Below we have included a variety of legal
case studies which will outline areas of concern, the
solution implemented, the result and the economic
outcome each client experienced.
Secretarial Support
Small Firm in
Greater London
Small law firm in Greater London. 5 fee earners
with a plan to grow to 10. Specialising in immigration,
family and a rapidly growing conveyancing department.
Areas of concern
-
Reduce the cost of support staff;
-
Avoid the traditional use of
secretaries;
-
Reduce space occupied by non fee earning staff.
Outsource solution
Result
Top
Midsize Law Firm in
Hertfordshire
A
midsize size Law firm with over 30 fee earners based in
Hertfordshire.
Areas of concern
-
Backlogs in certain departments;
-
Challenges in attracting and
retaining good staff due to the lure of London;
-
Lack of office space to take on
expansion of the fee earning team.
Outsource solution
Result
Top
Expanding Law Firm in the
Midlands
A
midsize
sized law firm with 3 offices based in The Midlands handling
family, crime (including legal aid) and civil litigation
work. With an increase in work, costs and continuing
space constraints they outsourced the copy and audio
typing without reducing any secretarial headcount in
the UK.
Area of
concern
-
Rising staff costs in The Midlands resulting in the
work not being profitable;
-
Increased pressure from clients and Legal Services
Commission
to lower the cost their services;
-
Outgrowing office space even with 3 offices in close
proximity.
Outsource solution
-
Establish teams of specialist transcribers per department
offshore to handle typing.
-
Ensure space in offices are filled with fee earners
while ensuring that increased volume of typing is
covered;
-
Ability to reduce the cost of the work.
Result
Top
Legal Aid Law Firm in
London
A
midsized sized Law Firm in Greater London with a large
legal aid department, but also handling crime, family, housing and
conveyancing.
Area of
concern
-
Rising staff costs in London resulting in the work
not being profitable;
-
Increased pressure with rising costs and legal aid
rates remaining low;
-
Increased pressure from their clients to bring down
the cost of the conveyancing package and other
services;
-
Increased pressure on fee earning staff to take on
more work.
Outsource solution
-
Establish teams to handle secretarial work;
-
Avoid high staff costs of London;
-
Ability to reduce the unit cost of the work;
-
Ability to free up onshore secretarial time to take
on more complex work and thereby free up fee earner
time.
Result
-
A
package that results in a cost that is acceptable to
the client and returns a profit;
-
Ability to keep offering legal aid work;
-
Ability to increase the workload without having to
employ extra staff at London costs.
Top
Large Law Firm in
Leeds
A
large law firm in Leeds was having problems with
backlogs in the Personal Injury department and hence
impacting on client service.
Area of
concern
-
Growing backlogs within the department;
-
Increased need to send simple yet voluminous letters
to clients;
-
Increased client frustration as they did not know
what was happening with the case.
Outsource solution
-
Establish team to handle volume secretarial work;
-
UK
secretaries decide what to move offshore and what to
keep in the UK;
-
Ability to reduce the unit cost of the work.
Result
-
Elimination of backlogs on documentation production;
-
Increase in client service due to elimination of
backlogs;
-
Reduction in queries and phone calls as clients are
now aware of the status of their case.
Top
Conveyancing
Specialist Law
Firm in London
A
specialist law firm based in London handling the purchase
of new build properties from developers for buyers.
Area of
concern
Outsource solution
-
Establish an offshore team to handle the majority of
the conveyancing process for their clients (up to
70%);
-
Avoid high staff costs as only the management of the
process and the legal judgement is completed in
London;
-
Ability to reduce the unit cost of the work.
Result
Top
Payroll/Accounts
Midsize firm
in Greater
London
Midsize law firm in Greater London with 80 fee earners. Over
the years the firm allowed many of their staff to go
part time which resulted in them having 5 part-time
staff working on payroll and accounts working a total 9
days between them a week where only 2.5 full time staff
were needed.
Areas of concern
·
Competing with city firm salaries to keep staff;
·
Amount
of space occupied by the 5 staff, as each had their own
work station;
·
Lack
of continuity of work;
·
Implementation of system changes which were long
overdue;
Outsource solution
·
Take
on 2 FTE offshore and keep 1 onshore staff member 3 days
a week to manage the offshore resource.
Result
·
Lower
staff costs;
· System
changes implemented under the direction of an experienced
project manager at Magellan;
·
Standardisation and continuity of accounts through the
practice;
·
Reduced staff overhead costs in the UK;
·
Office
space freed up.
Top
Credit
Control
Mid
to Large Firm
in Southampton
Mid to large size law firm in the South of England with 3
offices. Over 100 fee earners who excelled at generating
new business but were having
problems getting the money in as collection was left up
to each fee earner and their secretary. The
Practice generally had at least £600,000 worth of fees
outstanding at any one time. It took an average time of
4.5 months to get a bill paid but some large bills were
taking around 16 months.
Areas of concern
·
Getting clients to settle bills in shorter time scales;
·
Ensuring professional communication with clients with
regard to outstanding bills;
·
Freeing up fee earner and support staff time chasing
payments.
Outsource solution
· Take
on 1 full time FTE offshore to send out reminders after
30 days and to contact relevant clients and relevant
departments to ensure prompt payments.
Result
·
Time
delay between bill and payment considerably reduced;
·
Fee
Earner and Secretaries time freed up to deal with client
care;
· Increase on follow up business due to increased client care and professional
contact with regard to payment;
·
Lower
staff costs.
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