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Mattern Leads Am Law 200 Firm Through Administrative Services Restructure

An Am Law 200 firm, with 300 attorneys across multiple offices in the continental US, sought out Mattern's expertise to assess the efficiency of their administrative support structure and devise a strategic plan for its future.

OPPORTUNITY
An Am Law 200 firm, with 300 attorneys across multiple offices in the continental US, sought out Mattern's expertise to assess the efficiency of their administrative support structure and devise a strategic plan for its future. The firm faced challenges such as high secretary-to-attorney ratios, inconsistent processes across offices, limited centralized resources, and scant administrative support in smaller offices. Each office operated somewhat independently, despite the firm's adoption of hybrid work arrangements for both attorneys and administrative staff. This prompted a pressing need to revamp their administrative framework to better serve their legal team. Although the firm had initiated some measures to manage the effects of a dispersed workforce, they enlisted Mattern to conduct an all-encompassing review of their administrative support and propose improvements to better assist their attorneys.

PROCESS/SOLUTIONS
The firm lacked comprehensive data on the daily activities of their administrative staff and the extent to which attorneys were handling administrative tasks themselves, partly due to hybrid work requirements and limited administrative support availability. To address this, Mattern employed RevelationLegal, a proprietary survey tool tailored for law firms by legal administrators. This tool surveyed all personnel within the firm to identify their daily tasks and estimated costs based on employee salaries. This approach provided Mattern with valuable insights to estimate costs associated with key activities and pinpoint areas where non-billable hours could be reallocated to increase attorneys' billable hours.

To gain deeper understanding of the firm's operations, workflows, needs, and culture, Mattern conducted on-site focus groups with each practice group and held interviews with key personnel. The aim was to gather feedback from various stakeholders within the firm, comprehensively evaluating support from both attorneys' and administrative professionals' perspectives and identifying unique needs within each practice group.

RESULTS
Drawing from the data collected through RevelationLegal, insights from focus groups, and information provided by the firm, Mattern drafted and presented a Support Services Consultation Report to the firm. This report encapsulated key feedback from staff and offered recommendations to enhance support services and improve operational efficiency.

Mattern's recommendations encompassed various initiatives, including centralizing certain aspects of attorney support services, redirecting tasks identified during onsite visits and through RevelationLegal, addressing obstacles attorneys encounter when seeking support, streamlining the support request process, ensuring equitable workloads for administrative staff to prevent burnout, establishing career paths and succession plans for administrative personnel, and increased billable hours for attorneys.

In addition to the above, Mattern also provides projected costs if the firm wishes to outsource these functions along with the projected costs to modify in-house operation. In this situation, the firm would conservatively realize savings in excess of 20% if either path was chosen. When the firm went through the pros and cons of the different solutions that Mattern compiled, the firm was enamored with the benefits of outsourcing these services and is currently heading down that path.

CLIENT SUCCESS
In the end, based on the exceptional results achieved, the Mattern team was pleased to receive a Net Promotor Scale (NPS) score of 10 on a scale of 1-10 from the firm’s Executive Committee.

Headquartered in Charlotte, this well-established 275-attorney firm with 8 offices serves clients throughout the southeast and Washington, DC.  The firm had multiple offsite records providers serving location-specific offices.  In an all-too-familiar scenario, a larger provider which housed a significant portion of the firm’s records had recently been purchased by another provider, the result of which had caused the firm’s service to go from bad to worse - including missing boxes - raising serious doubts as to the accuracy of the firm’s inventory.

Mattern Helps Regional Firm Consolidate Vendors, Increase Destruction Limits, and Win a Significant 31% Savings in Offsite Records Costs

Mattern Helps Regional Firm Consolidate Vendors, Increase Destruction Limits, and Win a Significant 31% Savings in Offsite Records Costs

With more than 80 attorneys, Woods Rogers PLC is one of the largest law firms in Virginia.

In 2020, the firm’s offsite records storage contract with their national provider was coming up for renewal.  After a complimentary benchmark by Mattern, Woods Rogers’ leadership knew their pricing and terms could be dramatically improved.

Mattern Helps Woods Rogers Find a Way Out of Prohibitive Offsite Storage Contract at No Cost to the Firm

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Pierce Atwood LLP is a multi-service law firm based in New England with over 160 attorneys in six offices in the northeast U.S. The firm utilized Mattern in the past to complete a competitive request for proposal process for their outsourcing services.

Pierce Atwood Turns Again to Mattern to Assist with Incumbent Outsourcing Renewal and Achieves 17% Savings

Pierce Atwood Turns Again to Mattern to Assist with Incumbent Outsourcing Renewal and Achieves 17% Savings

With nearly 400 attorneys across 24 domestic offices, this Southeast-based Am Law 200 firm had a firm-wide initiative to examine and strategically reduce back-office expenses.

Southeast-based Am Law 200 Firm Leverages Mattern to Find Savings and Improved Services in Office Supplies

Southeast-based Am Law 200 Firm Leverages Mattern to Find Savings and Improved Services in Office Supplies

This 350 attorney, New York-based firm is one of the leading law firms serving the financial services sector.

Mattern’s Contract Compliance Delivers Savings, Captures Headcount Reduction of 27% for Am Law 200 Firm

Mattern’s Contract Compliance Delivers Savings, Captures Headcount Reduction of 27% for Am Law 200 Firm

This 45-attorney, Northern California firm sought to improve costs and contract terms and conditions for its offsite records storage as well as on-site services including thousands of square feet of basement records storage, shredding services and also address an overall need to develop an information governance (IG) program that would allow for the defensible destruction of decades worth of records.

Northern California Firm Improves Information Governance Program and Reduces Offsite Records Storage Costs, Achieving High 6-Figure Savings

Northern California Firm Improves Information Governance Program and Reduces Offsite Records Storage Costs, Achieving High 6-Figure Savings

Marshall Dennehey is a highly regarded Am Law 200 firm with 500 attorneys across seven states. They have been practicing law for over 60 years and are one of the nation’s largest law firms devoted to civil defense litigation.

Mattern Helps Marshall Dennehey Reduce Office Supplies Spend by 33%

Mattern Helps Marshall Dennehey Reduce Office Supplies Spend by 33%

This Am Law 200 firm with 312 attorneys in 18 offices engaged Mattern in 2014 to analyze and make recommendations to improve the firm’s offsite records and ultimately lead a Request for Proposal (RFP) process and contract negotiation.

Mattern Helps Am Law 200 Firm Enhance Value of Offsite Records Contract with Ongoing Contract Compliance

Mattern Helps Am Law 200 Firm Enhance Value of Offsite Records Contract with Ongoing Contract Compliance

This Boston-based firm had approximately 3,000 cubic feet of files in storage with a national off-site records storage vendor the firm had targeted for destruction prior to the pandemic.

Mattern Reduces Records Destruction Costs by 62.5% for Boston Firm

Mattern Reduces Records Destruction Costs by 62.5% for Boston Firm

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Mattern Helps Am Law 200 Firm Reshape Outsourcing Strategy for Substantial Savings and Wins Six-Figure Signing Incentive

Mattern Helps Am Law 200 Firm Reshape Outsourcing Strategy for Substantial Savings and Wins Six-Figure Signing Incentive

This Global 100/Am Law 100 firm has 700 attorneys and 13 domestic offices and had previously engaged Mattern to negotiate the firm’s offsite records contract, achieving solid results; however, when it came to renewal time, the firm’s long-standing provider proposed an increase in storage and service costs of up to 13% each year of the new term—an offer leadership felt could be better.

Mattern Turns Offsite Records Contract Renewal Into Significant Win for Global 100/Am Law 100 Firm, Incumbent Pays Fees

Mattern Turns Offsite Records Contract Renewal Into Significant Win for Global 100/Am Law 100 Firm, Incumbent Pays Fees

Headquartered in St. Louis, this 150-attorney firm with multiple offices throughout the Midwest approached Mattern about assisting the firm with management of their records, data governance, and library services.

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