Our “Secret Sauce” is Revealed

By Kate | Contract Negotiations , Pricing , White Papers

​In a secret pricing market, how can firms truly know whether their contract is on par with the market without external advisement? Our new white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, shares benchmarking information for firms to begin to understand how their contracts measure up.

Many may shake their heads, wondering why we would give away this information.

Having knowledge of appropriate metrics and a pricing framework only provides a foundation upon which to build in your contract negotiations. Any negotiation is a give-and-take process, with two sides of the table deciding to collaborate together in order to find a mutually beneficial middle ground. There are still many other elements that factor into the negotiation process including practice areas, size, vendor rep, product/content mix, vendor preference and many more.

We estimate that 15% of the large law firm market is substantially overpaying, a majority of which are AmLaw 100 or based out of New York City. This report serves as a point of reference for law firm administrators and legal information decision makers to initiate the process of correcting pricing for their firm. For the rest of the market, this report brings assurance to how your contracts and proposals for new products compares and takes into consideration multiple variables and parameters.

In May 2017, Feit Consulting will release our next white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, in which we share revealing benchmarks every firm will need to have in contract review and negotiations. With 16 years in this business, we’ve accumulated a knowledge base unparalleled in legal information; we call it our “secret sauce”.

In sum, Feit Consulting’s Optimizing Legal Information Pricing report reveals valuable, essential information we think every law firm should have. It gets you to a level playing field. Firms that order the report pre-release can have up to five legal information contracts evaluated against our benchmarks. For more information, click here.

Feit’s White Papers

By Michael Feit | White Papers

The legal information market is constantly evolving due to advanced technologies and vendors’ changing pricing structures and content packages, while firms are striving to efficiently deliver legal information. As a thought leader and partner to firms in managing their legal information, Feit Consulting developed the Market Trends Legal Information Series.

The Series is a unique set of resources, providing law firm administrators with market analysis, expertise, and future trend forecasts, and shares critical insights for shaping your firm’s legal information management strategy. Our team of experts work collaboratively, analyzing data obtained in surveys and interviews, to address challenges facing legal information professionals.

Current reports and resources in the Series include:

• Westlaw & Lexis: Path to Commoditization

• Sole Provider Viability Decision Guide

• The Sole Provider Playbook

• Optimizing Legal Information Pricing

• Beyond Virtualization: Transforming the Law Library

• Disruptors: Turning Continual Change to Your Advantage

• Survey Results

Read more about the Market Trends Legal Information Series.

Value of the Office Copy Audit

By Michael Feit | Best Practices , Budgeting

Savvy librarians are always looking for ways to assess and right-size their collections, both print and electronic. As practice groups come and go, information needs change, and new products come to market. There are several kinds of collection audits that can be conducted at different times. For instance, the Office Copy Audit can be a valuable tool in annual budget preparation.

“Office Copies” is a budget line that is continually growing and can be an emotional powder keg when surveying attorneys about their office copy needs. As you review office copies by practice group, you can build a report with data showing Management exactly how much it costs to support a practice area’s information needs. Finance is always interested in data that provides insight into practice group spend versus practice group profitability.

For report generation, you will need to categorize and sort your resources by title, vendor, practice group and price. Areas to consider for your Office Copy Audit:

(1) Are you choosing the best content for the price?

(2) Have other vendors moved into the market with the same content but at a better value?

(3) Are you including office copies in a LMA; and if so, does the Swap-Out Period give you enough flexibility to add and delete copies as attorney numbers change?

(4) When was the last time you actually surveyed attorneys on the value of the office copies they receive?

Once you have your report in hand, set aside a time to meet with the Practice Chair to review titles and expenses charged to the group. This can be a real eye-opener when it comes to costs incurred. Many times the mere cost of publications will gain support for cancellation of materials that are seldom used. This conversation can bring up other factors to consider, such as format changes from electronic to print for better access.

The Office Copy Audit is a win-win for the library, because it highlights to Management that you care about your budget spend. The audit opens a line of communication with the Practice Chair and shows that you are thinking about how to best support their legal information needs in a cost-effective manner.

As firms continue to question the costs of library real estate and resources, a full Collection Audit might be something to consider. As prices of print and online resources escalate, the Collection Audit will identify redundant content and help you right-size your resources better. Feit Consulting can work with your firm on an Office Copy Audit or a full Collection Audit. Click here to learn how your firm can work with Feit.

The Value of Electronic Resource Management (ERM) Tools for Law Firms

By Michael Feit | Best Practices , Resources

There is great value in providing metrics to management on the utilization of library resources. To be a truly modern library, you need to be able to access and analyze real-time data about your online subscriptions and library services and how they are being utilized. With many Electronic Resource Management (ERM) tools on the market, if your firm doesn’t already have one in place, it may be the time to consider such an investment. While the upfront expense might seem significant, presenting the purchase to management in a business case and showing return on investment that the ERM will provide can go far to help management better understand the value of the purchase.

The data analysis and insight an ERM tool provides in evaluating electronic subscriptions for renewal or cancellation may in fact help to offset the actual costs of the ERM purchase. In terms of contract negotiations for electronic subscriptions, ERMs provide you with the raw data regarding actual usage of your online vendors.  This is powerful information and can help guide your decisions on whether to retain or cancel an expensive subscription or try to negotiate a lower fee if usage is low. You can pull reports and chart usage with ease based on a wide variety of criteria, including office location, practice group, individual user, and date ranges. The canned reports allow you the flexibility of charts and graphs to help explain to management library expenses, especially at budget time. ERMs can also fulfill many other functions.

Key benefits and capabilities of ERMs:

• Help manage your contracts.

• Review research queries within databases to identify users who may require additional training.

• Utilize password management tools to make it easy for users to hop onto databases by having their passwords pre-populated and allow users instant access to firm-wide resources.

• Identify the top users of online resources to inform them of database enhancements and additional training.

• Analyze usage, allowing the library to market any under-utilized online resources.

• Avoid out-of-contract costs by including warning screens and messaging in online databases to direct your users to alternate resources when they go to excluded content.

• As many ERMs allow for client/matter number validation, track and bill clients for time spent performing research on databases.

• Promote mobile research and access to online resources and passwords.

• By tracking research and reference queries, many ERMs allow users to submit research requests online, which provides a centralized place to manage library research requests and allows for easy reporting of statistics.

• Track metrics that make it easier to communicate the value of the library to firm management.

A few key players in this space are Priory Solutions (ResearchMonitor), OneLog, and Lucidea (LookUp Precision). As described above, the ERM product suite is robust. You do not have to buy everything at once. Assess your immediate needs and go from there. Purchase and implement; then see how the product allows you to calculate metrics. Show that data to management. In doing so, future ERM module purchases will be easier for management to understand because they are already seeing the power of the ERM tool. `

Measuring The Modern Library – What exactly do your metrics show?

By Michael Feit | Best Practices , Modern Law Library

Change is the only constant. There are changes we can forecast, and there are those to which we must react. Utilizing metrics and analytics will help support everyday operations, and changes at the firm that effect the Library. This data can come from an array of sources: Budget, Electronic Resource Management (ERM), User Feedback and even Associations Surveys.

Let’s start with the budget since this is almost the end of the year and most of our clients are finalizing renewals and expense projections. Consider just how meaningful is your budget? Does it truly reflect your operations? Are you capturing and monitoring revenue streams as well as expense? Are you billing for research services? If so, are you analyzing this data to identify which attorneys are passing on costs, and who is writing off client related expense.

For those with an ERM in place, whether monitoring reference requests or analyzing user data to assess ROI, ERMs are a valuable tool in the arsenal of the Modern Library. Robust reporting capabilities allow the Librarian to slice, dice and analyze data providing a better understanding of what is working in the Modern Library and what might need adjusting, like contracts for online resources seldom used or identification of training opportunities.

Since the Library provides many services, soliciting user feedback is valuable in figuring out what is working and what isn’t bringing value. The Modern Library is responsive to change when it needs to occur. A simple “how are we doing” at the end of a fulfilled request provides real time information and allows for agile change.

With the recent publication of the 2017 Biennial AALL Salary Survey & Organizational Characteristics, valuable metrics regarding salary, staffing patterns, Librarian attorney ratios are available allowing you to benchmark your Library. Are staffing and salaries where they should be for a firm your size?

The value of all these metrics lies in the data the Librarian can use to justify staffing, budgets and to assess the general ROI of the Library. For law firm Administrators, hard data turned into informative charts and graphs can tell the story of the modern Library in a visual way that is powerful beyond the numbers.