How leading law firms are driving organization efficiency to protect their competitive advantage
(White Paper Excerpt)
Assessment leads to improved performance, which is evidenced by the data collected following the delivery of prescriptive training. Following assessment, prescriptive training, and a post-training assessment, the national average rate of proficiency jumps from 64% to 95%. This represents 48% improvement. For law firms this translates into a hard core cash benefit. With the current rate of proficiency at 64%, the cost of inefficiency in document production for a firm with 100 secretaries represents 34,677 hours of productivity lost annually due to document production inefficiencies at a cost of $950,000 per year. Following assessment and targeted training, firms can realize a cost savings of $755,682 after the first year.
On average, secretaries spend 17 hours per week producing complex legal documents. Secretaries operating at a 64% rate of proficiency spend 7.5 hours formatting documents using inefficient techniques. Increasing the rate of proficiency to 95% saves each secretary an average of 6 hours per week in productivity, resulting in a reduction of overtime expenses for a firm by as much as 50% and equipping a team of 85 secretaries to handle the workload of 100 secretaries.
Firms that combine an assessment driven performance improvement program with a strategy to reduce its support staff can achieve a savings 15% of the cost of salaries and benefits for their entire secretarial workforce, which on average is a savings of $9,000 per secretary. Firms with 100 secretaries that are committed to maintaining document production skills long-term can achieve a savings upwards of $1,000,000 year after year.
Intangible ROI, although more difficult to measure, is equally as important, such as the ability to successfully increase attorney-to-secretary ratios, increased confidence and willingness of support staff to take on assigned tasks, better team coverage across practice areas, improvements in employee morale, and improved client service. This is the outcome of achieving operational efficiency.