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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

CUT CAREFULLY - Here's a one-liner that will absolutely slay at your next seminar: too often in the legal industry, "rightsizing" is more like "right-now-sizing." A majority of law firms surveyed by legal tech company BigHand—63%—say they're planning to make changes to their support staff structure over the next two years, including centralizing teams and upping secretary-to-lawyer ratios, as well as outsourcing. But Briana McCrory, CMO for BigHand, emphasized that firms need to have a solid understanding of the data before making structural changes or head count reductions because shortsighted moves today can end up causing major headaches in the long run. Law firms "need to understand what level and type of support is required to best support their business both now [and] in the future. Support staff structures will continue to evolve over the next several years, so firms should be focused on longer-term goals when making these decisions," McCrory told Law.com's Andrew Maloney. "If they get this wrong, not only is it costly and difficult to find replacements, but it will also likely impact their lawyers and clients."

THE DESPERATION OF INDEPENDENCE - In law firms, just as in life, there is a point where insisting on toughing out hardships alone crosses over from somewhat noble to totally foolish. As Law.com's Amanda O'Brien reports, while it's no surprise that financially healthy midsize firms' desire for autonomy leads them to reject merger offers, partners' preference for independence can also prevent not-so-healthy firms from seeking mergers until it is too late for the firm to survive. Zeughauser Group partner Kent Zimmermann told O'Brien that "firms prize their independence so much that they usually don't want to think about a deal or combination with a larger firm until they're weakening." "They miss the window [to merge] from a position of strength," he said. "It should be the opposite of that. … If the desired outcome is to create the strongest possible firm, that's more likely to happen when a firm is in a position of strength."

ON THE RADAR - Mandell Menkes was hit with a biometric privacy lawsuit Aug. 18 in Illinois Circuit Court for Cook County. The court action was brought by DC Law on behalf of a former legal secretary for the Chicago-headquartered law firm who contends that her fingerprints were scanned and stored in its time clock system in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The case is 2023L008294, Gagen v. Mandell Menkes LLC. Stay up on the latest state and federal litigation, as well as the latest corporate deals, with Law.com Radar.   

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