Over the past few years, law firms globally have recognised the need to create more efficient, productive and responsive support services. The pace of change was, in the main, gradual – until the past year. As the BigHand Legal Workflow Management survey reveals, one trend in firms’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic has been to make very significant reductions in support staff numbers.
Over three quarters (78%) of NA firms reduced support staff headcount / hours – for 16% this is permanent. It’s a similar picture in the UK, with 70% confirming they have made cutbacks, and 26% of those being permanent reductions in headcount / hours. In APAC the reduction in support staff was smaller – with 32% confirming they have made permanent or temporary reductions.
As expected, the cutbacks to support staff have impacted billable hours. The BigHand research reveals billable hours have stayed the same or decreased for 47% of NA firms and 56% of UK and APAC firms. What has caused this reduction? The research suggests lawyers are having to spend more time on low value work due to the reduction in support staff and the lack of good processes for allocating work to the right support resources when everyone is working remotely. In both NA (61%) and UK (50%), support staff have been utilized less during the pandemic.
In APAC almost two thirds (64%) confirm support staff are utilised the same, and only 4% confirm they have been used less. This is more than likely because fewer APAC firms had previously made any changes to the support structure. While fourth fifths of UK (81%) and NA firms (79%) had already restructured or introduced teams for support staff prior to the pandemic, just a quarter of APAC firms (25%) had made this change. During the past year fee earners with relationship-based secretarial support will simply have carried on as before, albeit remotely. Most firms who moved away from this type of support structure did so to improve efficiency/utilisation which leads to the question of if it is perpetuating an underutilisation problem that existed prior to moving to remote working.
Wasted Hours
This data raises several key questions for law firms: if lawyers are making less use of support staff, how much additional time are they spending on low value work? How many hours – both billable and administrative - are they working simply to keep up with client needs? How much time is not being utilised effectively and therefore not charged back to the client? How much time is being recorded but later written off?
If firms are not proactively tracking the amount/type of work being undertaken or providing end to end visibility of workflow and resources, it will be impossible to determine how effectively workloads are being managed.
As the hybrid working model becomes embedded within operational strategies for both fee earners and support teams, better visibility of tasks in hand and support staff availability will be essential if lawyers are to avoid burn out and maximise billable hours.
This was an excerpt from The Legal Workflow Management Report. Access the full report to dive deeper into the findings from over 900 legal management professionals:
