Attorney and client documents produced the same way in every office
A Top 100 U.S. law firm standardized five print centers on one workflow, so any center can take another center's work and finish it identically.
Customer overview
Five centralized print centers produce documents for every office of this firm. The Office Services team runs them against client deadlines that keep getting tighter, and as client demands increased those deadlines started to show up in productivity, efficiency and service levels.
As demand grew, the firm discovered that the five centers performing the same function were not working the same way, and that difference was costing deadlines and hours. A workflow assessment across all five centers confirmed it: the same job could be set up, produced and finished differently depending on where it landed.
Business challenge
Four problems followed from that, and each of them landed in the same place: the hours the Office Services team spent getting work out the door on time.
- No two print centers were configured the same. Some ran one workflow platform, some ran another, and some operated standard print controllers with limited automation.
- Job setup varied by location. Best practices were hard to share, resources were hard to move, and manual touchpoints stayed in the process because no common set of job presets existed to remove them.
- Work could not move between centers. Peak periods, staffing shortages and equipment downtime had no backstop, because another center could not simply pick up the job and produce it the same way.
- The result showed up in service levels. Missed production deadlines, excessive overtime for Office Services staff, and a standing risk of bottlenecks and service disruption.
FlexTG solution
FlexTG reviewed existing workflows, production requirements, finishing needs and growth plans with Office Services leadership and staff at all five print centers. The brief was simple: remove manual touchpoints, make every center identical, and give the firm real redundancy between locations.
- 12 production color presses across the five print centers, configured to one standard rather than five local ones.
- One standardized workflow platform at every location, with automated workflows and job presets so a job is processed the same way wherever it runs.
- Inline punching and finishing, which took manual punching and finishing steps out of the process that previously consumed labor hours and delayed completion.
- Full production redundancy, so work can be routed to another center when volume spikes, staff are short or equipment is down.
Business results
- Job preparation takes less time and fewer manual interventions, so operators handle more work in the same shift.
- Overtime fell as automation and inline finishing replaced labor intensive manual steps, and turnaround improved for attorney and client requests.
- Any center can assume another center’s production, which keeps service uninterrupted and gives the firm a genuine business continuity position.
- Output quality is consistent wherever the work is produced, training is simpler, manual setup errors are less likely, and the overall cost of document production came down on a repeatable standard that new offices, additional print centers and higher volumes can join.
Why it matters
Legal deadlines do not move. When each print center works differently, a short staffed shift or a device failure in one city has no backstop, and the accuracy of a critical document depends on how one operator set up the job.
Standardizing equipment and workflow gives a firm continuity between offices, one client experience wherever work is produced, and fewer overtime hours for the teams producing it. If your print centers are built differently from one another, this is the exposure to look at first.
Request a production print assessment
FlexTG will review the applications you produce today, the equipment and workflow behind them, and what moving more of that work in-house would take.