How Outsourcing Helped Geraci Law Firm Save 60% on Overhead Costs
How this Law Firm Saved Overhead Costs
Geraci Law Firm, led by our CEO, Anthony Geraci, faced the common challenge of managing overhead costs, particularly the salaries of its legal secretaries. In order to address this issue, Anthony made the decision to outsource the legal secretarial work to a remote team. This decision helped Geraci Law Firm save 60% on overhead costs and inspired Anthony to create MOVE, which stands for Managed Outsourced Virtual Employees. Law Firm Saved Overhead Costs!
The Move to MOVE
Most companies had the dilemma during COVID – lay off and cut employment or figure out another way. Anthony chose the latter. He went to his partners and asked, “What is the difference between having to be remote and our employee being 20 miles away versus our employee being 6,000 miles away?” Geraci hired their first remote employee for the purpose of replacing a legal secretary who had just quit. Instead of going the traditional path of replacing the legal secretary, Geraci replaced them with a remote employee and trained them on legal secretarial duties.
Four remote legal secretaries later, Geraci’s remote team serves the attorneys 16 hours a day with all of the normal expectations one would have of a legal secretary, including: filing motions,
drafting case shells, drafting basic discovery (form interrogatories, special interrogatories), organizing the case file, drafting engagement letters, setting up court calls and other appointments for the attorneys, interpreting local court rules as it pertains to filings, and many other things.
Anthony said, “In retrospect, I should have done this earlier. Our remote team is hungry to learn and grow as well as be on top of their jobs. Had I done this earlier, we would have expanded even faster and delivered even better quality work to our clients.
The Economics Behind the Move
At the time, Geraci was paying its legal secretaries $65,000 a year. Add in all of the taxes and benefits required to be given to an employee, and that salary ballooned to $87,750. Geraci had 2 of
them that had quit within a span of 60 days, for a total of $175,500. This doesn’t even include the overhead of office space, over time, parking, mileage reimbursement, etc. Add that in, and the
total cost of 2 legal secretaries balloons to $201,500.
By replacing the 2 secretaries with 4 remote team secretaries at $19 an hour, costs the firm $39,489.20 per secretary, or $78,979.40, or 39% of the cost of 2 onshore employees. Even by doubling the number of employees I had before, I still save 21% and now have I better coverage, able to have 2 secretaries work the morning shift and 2 work the evening shift.
But More Than That, It’s The Gratitude – Law Firm Saved Overhead Costs
A week has not gone by that I haven’t been thanked at least once by one of my virtual employees. What did I do for them? Great question. All I did was give them a job. For them, it’s the opportunity to prove themselves as well as just generally grateful for a job.
The MOVE Advantage in Saving You Thousands of Dollars
By outsourcing its legal secretarial work, Geraci Law Firm was able to reduce labor and overhead costs significantly. Moreover, the virtual team provided high-quality legal support services, which increased the efficiency of the firm’s operations. Anthony realized the potential benefits of outsourcing and decided to build MOVE to help other companies benefit from this cost-effective approach.
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