Alternative Secretarial Approaches to Legal Support

Right Sourcing is our moniker for the process of determining who, where and how key administrative services are provided to a law firms' attorneys. Outsourcing for Corporate America is where most functions can be sent outside the company to a lower cost location and often outside the country. Right Sourcing is for professional service firms where key administrative activities and institutional knowledge must remain within the firm while other administrative functions can be moved to other geographies within the United States.

The objectives of our Right Sourcing studies were twofold:

1. To compare the cost of providing High Value Add (HVA) administrative support services, such as accounting and finance, IT, and HR and marketing support in a client firm's headquarters location with lower cost location(s) within the United States.
2. To benchmark the firm's administrative support structure ( i.e. , the number of staff performing specific clerical functions such as secretarial support and word processing) against established industry norms to identify potential process re-engineering savings opportunities.

Our numerous studies documented what many management professionals and managing partners of law firms have thought for years: Law firms are inherently inefficient suppliers of administrative service.