BigHand shares findings from a recent survey of over 800 legal support staff, giving new insight into the daily challenges and working experiences of support teams globally.
One of the biggest issues we encounter when we take over a law firm’s secretarial and administrative support function, is that the teams—whether document production, print and mailroom, front of house, or even PAs
When law firms begin to research whether to outsource their secretarial and administrative support services, it can be difficult to know where to start. There’s a lot of information to take in, lots of jargon associated with outsourcing and the processes behind transferring services from in-house to a third party—all of which can act as a hindrance when exploring the possibilities available to your firm.
The latest Bellwether research paper titled, Stress in the Legal Profession: Problematic or Inevitable’, published today by LexisNexis UK, a leading global provider of information and analytics; highlights that stress is an endemic issue in the legal profession with two thirds of respondents currently experiencing high levels of stress despite the confident ‘business as usual’ industry outlook.
One of the questions we are asked before a firm elects to outsource is, “once we are working with you, how can we monitor the value you actually deliver to us?”, and at a more tactical level “how will we know you are meeting agreed service levels?”
How we demonstrate this is partly dependent on the key performance indicators (KPIs) we set, in close conjunction with each client, during our relationship with them. KPIs are deployed by outsourcing providers, of course, but law firms also use them regularly across their business. But in our experience rarely when evaluating the efficacy of their secretarial and administrative support. This is a missed opportunity, especially if a firm is serious about continually developing and improving its administrative support functions to its internal customers and end clients.
Hubshare is delighted to announce that Kennedys, a top 30 UK law firm, have chosen Hubshare as their collaborative project management tool to manage their Elite Practice Management upgrade to the latest version of Elite 3E. Kennedys, who have offices internationally and specialise in insurance, dispute resolution and advisory services, selected Hubshare, as it stood out for its usability and efficiency.
In a world where we are constantly thinking of ways to reduce our green footprint, it seems natural to extend the same thought to our working life. Everyone’s been guilty of printing off the wrong document or accidentally printing duplicates and overtime this adds up. Research by Kyocera found that an average office worker in the UK uses around 45 pieces of copy paper daily and two-thirds is deemed as waste. With our demand for paper being said to double from 2005 to 2030, we need to act to prevent these predictions from becoming a reality.
With International Women’s Day happening this month and Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s film, On The Basis of Sex, playing in cinemas across the globe, you might be led to think that women are dominating board rooms and senior roles across the country.
In this report, we focus on how women in one of the most competitive and male-dominated industries; law, are progressing in their careers and using technology to support them in their daily work. We speak to five successful lawyers from Keystone Law, one of the UK’s top 100 law firms, about their experiences working in the legal industry.
Stone King has been rapidly evolving and in the last 18 months alone, they have opened two new offices, grown revenue by 14% as well as implemented major technology change with a new practice management system.
Historically, upon realisation of the ability to type faster than one’s secretary, a fee earner’s first thought might have been, “I’ll need to get another secretary!”
The way law firms operate has changed substantially over the past decade. The sector has become more competitive, clients even more discerning, and the use of technology is slowly transforming many aspects of legal service delivery, and in some cases automating work that was previously the vanguard of fee earners themselves!
There is immense pressure on the legal sector at the moment. Increasingly, clients expect quicker and easier access to fee earners, more competitive pricing and internally, recruiting and then retaining top talent remains as important to a firm’s ongoing success as ever.
