Integration

Based on this insight, we saw that there was a far more effective way to be pairing assistants and attorneys. The firm had been pairing its legal assistants and attorneys based on the attorney's caseload.

Our recommendation was to pair legal assistants and attorneys based on the attorneys' work style rather than their caseload. Based on the research we did, we found that a single legal assistant could support a mixture of attorneys with a hybrid or digital style.

However, since a paper-based work style consumes 80 percent of an assistant's time, they should be paired with a single hybrid style or a pair of digital style attorneys.

By working with Ricoh Innovations, Fenwick & West was able to make important discoveries about their firm in ways that wouldn't have been possible if they had tried another digital solution themselves, or if they had relied on existing research that didn't take into account their own firm's particular working style. It was the data that Ricoh's team of researchers gathered that grounded these findings and enabled them to have such a significant impact.

Ricoh Innovations' research gave Fenwick & West an important framework that was an effective tool for them to use—one that enabled the firm's upper management to make informed business choices and discover new ways to become more cost effective. Greg Sueoka, one of the firm's partners who experienced first hand the results of our research summed up his experience of working with us with these words: "Working with Ricoh Innovations, we were able to better understand our work process and enhance our technology strategy to better meet the needs of our attorneys."