Dan Safran, Unbiased Consulting states that, “Our clients share that they are moving past the immediate crisis of employee safety and are becoming increasingly concerned about cost structures based on the financial markets. While law firms report that revenues are down in 2020 between 5-20%, expense outlays are significantly lower in areas of travel, client entertainment, conferences, lawyer and staff reimbursable expenses. Many firms have reduced compensation, furloughed a small number of employees and offset payroll costs via PPP loans. As such, many are reporting profits and distributions that will be near 2019 levels, with some firms reporting potentially increased shareholder distributions.
However, firms are increasingly concerned about 2021 and in an attempt to further lower costs, have hired our experts to immediately review their contractual obligations to achieve potential short and long term cost relief.
While some of these expense reduction initiative have been completed in-house or in the past, we note that client cost improvements have been inconsistent and underwhelming, as clients are not experts in any of these fields, and therefore do not understand the cost structures.
Unbiased Consulting’s client work in contractual cost reduction efforts have resulted in cost savings of between 10-45% – and this has been largely based off of previous contracts executed by internal client staff.”
The following are areas of cost reduction and cost management focus provided by Unbiased Consulting:
- Real estate and office lease re-evaluation and contract/lessor re-negotiations
- Staffing reductions
- Middle office and back office managed services/facilities management contracts (e.g., print room, copy center, hospitality, information governance and records, reception, etc.)
- Print/copy/scanning and multi-function device contracts
- Legal research agreements
- Library re-engineering
- Technology contracts
- Telecommunications contracts (your “wired” computer infrastructure as well as your “wireless” devices where you are paying for cell phone service)
- Print/copy/scanning and multi-function device contracts