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We offer the following example to illustrate the advantages of outsourcing:
As the principal or partner in a small firm, you are faced with the pressure of accepting a substantially large work load from a client with a short deadline. Since you maintain a lean staff (or if you are a solo practitioner having no real staff), in order for you to accept this project, you would have to choose from any of the following alternatives: (1) hire additional personnel; (2) call a temporary services agency; or (3) call a business specializing in Outsourcing.
- Hiring new staff entails spending money for classified ads; productive time being used up on interviews and other screenings; training and supervising new hires; overhead such as expanding your office space, adding a desk, chair, computer, printer, copier, fax machine, and providing extra office supplies; bookkeeping; payroll accounting; and the most expensive of all - monetary expenses, which include salary, worker's compensation insurance, unemployment taxes, Medicare, etc. Additional employee benefits such as vacation, sick days, personal days, medical, vision and life insurance, maternity leave, pension, etc., also need to be calculated into the total cost.
With this option you have gained another paralegal or staff attorney, and at the end of the project are left with the two other choices: (i) you could terminate him/her and pay unemployment compensation, or (ii) you could absorb him/ her into the payroll, paying for idle time between work assignments.
- Although you would avoid the “extra costs” of directly hiring new staff and save some money, contacting a temporary services agency would entail spending a good amount of money too. Consider that their hourly rates are usually high because their hourly rates include both their profit and the salary and other costs which they need to pay their temporary employees.
In going this route there is always the issue of supervising and training the temp attorney or paralegal to use your methods of performing the required work, and since you never know which temp you'll get - perhaps a different person each time – this could cost you time (which you may not have a lot of with a deadline approaching) and ….in the end money.
- Using the services of an outsourcing legal firm would not only would you save money on the “extra costs” of staffing your firm and overhead, but the outsourcing firm’s always available staff will handle your work each time completing the work at their office.
In choosing this option you allow your business to run, and the work to get done, without the disruption. With just high speed internet access, a scanner and an e-mail account, your documents could be immediately sent to the outsourcing company who would then attend to the work and send it back to you in time for your meetings, deadlines, etc. and your savings would be enormous.
A good outsourcing company will possess a professional and friendly staff who will treat you as if you are their only client whether your project is small or large, on-going or a one-time basis, and will maintain open lines of communication, making themselves available for your telephone calls and faxes. You only pay for the time involved in the completion of your work.
Prime candidates for outsourcing include small law firms experiencing growing pains and law firms working on a contingency fee or fixed fee basis. Even large law firms occasionally incur large projects, or periodic projects, for which they need an influx of qualified temporary attorneys so that their project can be organized in a quick and efficient manner, can use outsourcing firms as a useful tool in completing their projects. In fact all law firms interested in cutting costs should be interested in reaping the benefits of outsourcing.
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