Outsourcing Intake Part 1: Why Outsource Intake?

As an attorney, you need to spend your valuable time helping clients and on billable activities.  Most law practices have more legal cases to process than they can handle.  Most firms are not able to meet the deadlines and as a result, the cases get delayed. To compensate for the lack of resources, it is in the best interest of your law firm to outsource work. By hiring an outside resource, you will be able to better organize your responsibilities by focusing more on selected cases and catering to the needs of your clients faster.

By outsourcing, you can also dedicate the administrative staff in your firm to other tasks such as office assistance or training. Some law firms do a little of each by utilizing internal staff during the day and handling any overflow and after-hour intakes by outsourcing them to others.

Another good reason to hire outsourcing services is the cost savings that it will add to your firm.  Outsourcing legal processes can allow a law firm to achieve as much as 30% to 80% in cost reduction savings.

If you are hesitant upon hiring an outside resource, here are some questions to consider:

• How much do your attorneys charge per hour?
• How many billable hours are you losing by handling administrative tasks on your own?
• How much would it cost to hire an outsourcing service to do these tasks?
• What is the difference between potential earnings by attorneys and the cost of outsourcing?

Being able to outsource work gives you the chance for your law firm to grow its business.  This allows you to focus most of your time bringing in clients and working on cases, and considerably less time on the administrative functions. Since working with clients is what really drives your business forward, it’s cost beneficial to spend most of your energy on getting billable hours instead of wasting time on tasks that could be handled by someone else.