BigHand Survey Uncovers Significant Blind Spot in Law Firm Back Office Administration
CHICAGO (PRWEB) July 12, 2018 -- BigHand, the leading provider of voice, workflow and document creation technology to the legal market, today announced the results of a recent survey they commissioned from legal management consultants, Altman Weil. The survey titled, “The Handling of Administrative Support Work in Law Firms” was conducted to better understand how law firms are managing their back office operations today, and what their plans are for the future. Participants included law firm operations executives, including COOs, CFOs, HR Directors and other operations executives from firms ranging from 100 – 3,500 attorneys.
With intense pressure from clients to reduce costs yet still provide superior service, law firms today are challenged to make operational changes that will be effective in satisfying these demands. Determining the best strategies to meet client demands and provide top notch service while maintaining profitability isn’t easy, particularly considering increased competition from lower-cost, non-legal service providers and the increased pace of clients bringing work in house.
The survey found that 93% of firms place a very high priority on improving the efficiency, productivity and cost savings of their administrative support staff. However, when asked whether they had the data and information to make informed staffing decisions, it was clear they do not. Their confidence ranking on several critical factors all came in well under 50%, which is a startling disconnect.
Eric Wangler, President, BigHand North America comments, “This study has been quite eye opening in that it has uncovered a pronounced gap in the mindset of law firm operations executives. While it’s clear firms understand the urgency of maximizing efficiency in their back office administration to meet their clients’ evolving needs, and they appear committed to making the necessary changes, they admit to not having the information needed to execute these changes confidently.” Wangler continues, “Firms are basing staffing decisions on subjective data gathered by walking the floors to see if people look busy, but they don’t know what staff are working on, or if work assignments make sense based on their experience, cost and skillset. There is a tremendous amount of waste occurring with their current staffing structure, but they have no way to accurately evaluate it or confidently action upon it.”
BigHand has released a white paper - The Future of Law Firm Back Office Services and the Operational Blind Spot – covering the full results of the survey. The whitepaper is available for download at http://www.bighand.com/en-us/survey. For more information, please visit http://www.bighand.com or call (951) 506 5641.
About BigHand
BigHand is a leading software technology company with a big difference. Established in 1996, BigHand has developed a range of speech, workflow, document creation and process improvement solutions that help our customers achieve more in less time. BigHand is based in Chicago, Eindhoven, London, Sydney, Temecula and Toronto and currently supports over 545,000 licenses of our software in 3,000 global organizations.
BigHand’s Voice, Delegation and Improvement product suites are HIPAA compliant to protect the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI) as defined in the HITECH Act. BigHand is proud to be ISO27001 certified. For more information, visit http://www.bighand.com or follow @BigHandNA on Twitter or BigHand North America on LinkedIn.
Jami Gyurci, BigHand, http://www.bighand.com, +1 951 506 5641, [email protected]
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