To Cut Costs, Cut Associates’ Billable Hours Through Technology
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D. Casey Flaherty deals mostly with Kia Motors America’s outside law firms, and he often delivers this jolt: “I genuinely believe that partners’ billing rates are too low.”
But the corporate counsel follows with this: ” … at least compared to billing rates for associates.”
Flaherty’s concern is overspending on work assigned to associates, paralegals and others who bill time, not the high-priced partners whose experience and judgment he values. His unique approach is showing law firms they suffer delusions of adequacy when using software tools that often come free or cheap with desktop computers, to wit: Microsoft Word, Excel and PDF tools such as Adobe Acrobat.
“For too many people it doesn’t go much beyond treating a computer like a typewriter,” says Flaherty, 33, who spent more than four years as an associate with Holland & Knight before moving in-house. “They type into emails and in Word and in Excel boxes, but that’s about it. These tools can do so much more.”
Flaherty has audited the skills among nonpartners at some firms doing work for Kia and others auditioning for it.
Read original articleTags: Billing Rates, Casey Flaherty, Kia Motors America, law firms
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