Parcel Management Solutions Help Law Firms Win the Revenue Battle
For law firms, maintaining a healthy bottom line continues to be a struggle between meeting the needs of demanding clients and increasing back-office efficiency.
In its 2015 Report on the State of the Legal Market, the Georgetown University Law Center noted that control of the legal market is firmly in buyers’ hands, with many clients demanding better “efficiency, predictability and cost effectiveness” in the legal services they receive. As a result, rather than retain a single firm for all legal work, more clients are splitting up services between boutique firms, in-house staff, specialists and more to manage their costs.
Law offices not only have to contend with rising competitiveness, but also workflows that aren’t as smooth and efficient as they could be. According to the report, overall productivity in the legal industry has decreased for the past four years.
These challenges can seem overwhelming but firms can improve revenue and productivity by changing the way they handle one important office task: parcel management.
Law firms manage a lot of inbound and outbound parcels each day, from case files to discovery documentation to other critical material. The burden for managing all of this often falls to paralegals and administrative staff but that robs these workers of time they could spend on other important tasks. Manual parcel management also opens up costly revenue risks, including missed or overlooked documents, potential compliance violations and expensive parcel billing inaccuracies.
By implementing a unified, automated parcel management solution, law firms can free up staff time, create more accurate client charge backs, and save up to 75 percent on parcel carrier costs. Here’s how.
1. Reduce Spend, Control Costs
Parcel management solutions let you optimize carrier selection when sending packages, recommending the best rates and service options for each shipment automatically. The software can also help you earn or qualify for carrier or postal discounts when you send packages. Additionally, automatic address verification capabilities help you avoid parcel misdirection, delivery failure and costly address correction surcharges.
2. Eliminate Manual Processes
Manual work exists whether you send or receive parcels. Parcel management solutions ensure that your paralegals and administrative staff don’t waste time figuring out package costs or manually logging document receipts. The technology does it all for them, and can even help track inter-office document transfers. Anything with a barcode can be tracked, ensuring that you can easily discover where a given file was last sent.
3. Maintain Chain of Custody
Tracking and validation is crucial when sensitive documents change hands or are mailed. Electronic signatures verify accurate delivery, and automatic logging offers visibility into when a package was received, who received it, when your documents were processed and more.
4. Guarantee Accurate Charge Backs
With more clients asking for flat-fee service, it’s harder than ever for law firms to recoup bottom line operational costs. However, parcel management solutions allow you to capture and submit delivery data electronically via client matter billing systems and verify carrier billing in real time. That way, you charge back to your client with accuracy and appropriately allocate every charge and fee associated with package delivery.
Market pressures will continue to challenge law offices, but hidden sources of savings can offer relief. Automated parcel management solutions free you from absorbing shipping-related operational costs so you can bill accurately, work efficiently and generate revenue reliably.
Learn more about the ways parcel management solutions help law firms improve administrative productivity and save operational costs. Discover a new level of efficiency.