Kegel, Tobin & Truce APC wanted to find a way to achieve greater efficiencies, while gradually improving attorney-to-staff ratios and ensuring they kept their best-performing support staff.
The firm identified the best-performing legal secretaries and offered them the opportunity to become legal assistants, who would assume greater responsibilities and become billable employees. Each person jumped at the opportunity for the additional training provided by the firm and the subsequent advancement. The firm began phasing out the remaining legal secretaries through attrition and hiring clerical personnel, who performed lower level tasks at a significantly lower pay level. Through a dedicated team, LawDocsXpress provided 100% of the outsourced legal document preparation off-payroll, which resulted in significant savings. Also, LawDocsXpress’ expenses were on-demand, so Kegel Tobin Truce only paid for services when needed as work volume went through normal ebbs and flows.
Over the course of about two years, Kegel, Tobin Truce converted its most valuable support staff to billable legal assistants and improved their overall attorney/support staff ratios. Retention of the best support staff increased because the newly trained legal assistants were now producing more highly skilled, higher value work and as a result they reported greater work satisfaction. The amount of non-billable support staff labor was reduced, which resulted in significant savings net of expenses associated with outsourcing legal services and positioned the firm to be able to effectively adjust to fluctuations in workflow as a part of normal operations. Additionally, the firm eliminated all work backlogs, which improved overall client response rates.
