Stop Shipping Profits Out the Door: Best Practices for Law Firm Mailroom Management. MCS Management Services is a leading provider of on-site business support services, including mail center operations, shipping and receiving, records management, document and print center management, in-house litigation support, managed print services and related professional services.

1. Stop Shipping Profits
Out the Door
Best Practices for Law Firm
Mailroom Management
Nick Staffieri, CMDSM
Regional Director, Mail Systems Management Association
August 2012

2. Mailrooms: A Law Firm Cost Center
• Mailrooms are costing law firms more than they know.
• A study cited in The Facility Management Handbook reported mail accounts for
more than 9% of operating costs for Fortune 500 companies.
• For midsized law firms, that percentage is
likely higher because they usually lack
the resources to buy the latest technology
and stay abreast of changing regulations
and opportunities.

3. • One way to contain mailroom costs and ensure efficient operations is to consult
with an expert — a Certified Mail and Distribution Systems Manager (CMDSM).
• About 300 people nationwide hold the CMDSM
certification, a credential issued by the Mail Systems
Management Association.
• MSMA is a non-profit group founded in 1981.
Nick Staffieri, CMDSM

4. Mail Expenditures
• Use of express delivery services such as FedEx and UPS has exploded,
rising from $10 billion in 1989 to $180 billion in 2009.
• About 10% to 25% of these expenditures could
be avoided by improving the operations in shipping
departments and mailrooms.

5. • Law firm administrators need to calculate time and costs for inter- and
intra-office mail when assessing mailroom operations.
• Firms operating more than one office can accumulate significant delays,
security risks and expenses just moving documents within their own
facilities using messengers, couriers or full-time staff.
• As labor and fuel costs rise, mailroom
costs escalate accordingly.

6. Finding Savings
• The challenge in finding mailroom savings is that many legal
administrators don’t know what solutions are best for their firms.
• In 2009, InfoPrint Solutions surveyed 102 people responsible for their
mailroom operations:
• About 60% said they were not confident that their organizations
pay the least amount possible for postage.
• Nearly half do not think their mailrooms are running as efficiently
as possible.

7. • Specialists can bring the latest information,
guidelines and data to clients to help them
apply best practices.
• With a full audit, a CMDSM can help law
firms to choose technologies and
processes that maximize their efficiency.

8. Improving Efficiency
• Solutions that may improve mailroom efficiency and reduce or contains
costs include:
• Revising document handling processes and workflows
• Upgrading or changing computer hardware and/or software
• Using onsite, non-employee specialists in place of employees

9. • Data recognition and capture technologies have evolved.
• Many organizations are switching from traditional process where
scanning is done after sorting and handling mail to early scanning
beforehand.
• This can reduce manual work by 50% or more.
• Automating mailroom processed can show a return
on investment in less than one year.

10. Legal Requirements & Outsourcing
• Firms should look to mailroom solutions that help them conform to legal
requirements:
• Capture documents as they enter the office.
• Provide secure audit trails for the entire document lifecycle.
• To do this, they can rely on trained, onsite professionals who are better
qualified to support chain-of-custody requirements and compliance with
requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

11. • Outsourcing mailroom operations also eliminates the need to recruit
specialists in an area unfamiliar to most legal administrators.
• It also helps law firms contain headcount limits on full-time employees.
• By working with a mails systems expert, legal
administrators can get a grip on their firm’s
mailroom expenses …
… and stop shipping profits out the door!

12. Resources
There are several trade association-sponsored certification programs for mail
and document management. Check a list of associations and programs here:
http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/21912.
For other information about improving mailroom operations, visit the MCS
Management Services Knowledge Center:
http://www.mcsmanagement.com/KnowledgeCenter.aspx?id=1

13. Company Background
MCS Management Services is a leading provider of on-site business support services, including
mail center operations, shipping and receiving, records management, document and print center
management, in-house litigation support, managed print services and related professional services.
Over 30 Years of Business Support Experience
Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBENC)
96% Client Retention Rate since 1993
Senior management team of experts has an average tenure of over 15 years