Case closed: Law firm makes brief work of billing

success stories
Case closed:
Law firm makes
brief work of billing
CampusShip coding feature
saves 40 hours per week.
6 Compass Winter 2008
The lawyers who started the firm Barack
Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg
wanted to do something different.
The founders, two prominent
Chicago attorneys and two highly
esteemed law professors at Northwestern
University, sought to establish
a stable work environment in
which lawyers would learn about
their clients’ business and work with
those clients over an extended period.
Such an approach would allow the
firm’s lawyers to better serve the
clients’ interests.
The idea worked. Since its 1984
founding, the firm, which now occupies
seven floors of a Chicago skyscraper,
has grown steadily. Today, Christian
Dior, Lamborghini, Louis Vuitton,
Bank of America, First Industrial
Realty Trust, Volkswagen, Shell Oil
and Hitachi are just a few of the
companies on the firm’s list of prestigious
international clients that benefit
from the lawyers’ expertise in real
estate, corporate and securities,
intellectual property and tax law and
litigation. And while the firm has
grown to more than 90 lawyers, it still
prides itself on staying true to its values
of efficiency, teamwork and flexibility.
Although the firm’s approach may
differ somewhat from that of other
large corporate firms, Barack
Ferrazzano is similar to other law
firms in some regards: It needs to
manage its expenses by billing its
clients correctly and on time, and
Business 411
William Leone, manager
of office services at Barack
Ferrazzano Kirschbaum &
nagelberg, says Campusship
saves time and money.
Company Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum
& nagelberg LLp
Founded 1984
What Law firm
Where Chicago
employees 204 employees, 94 attorneys
Challenge Control rising
administrative costs
solutions Use Ups Campusship ® to
require and validate all client/
matter codes on the front
end, thereby streamlining
the cost allocation process
and recouping more
shipping expenses

PHOTOS, THIS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES (BOTTOM); OPPOSITE PAGE: JIM LUNING
it needs to send mountains of paperwork,
including contracts, briefs and
other legal documents.
“Our client base is a very demanding
and performance-oriented group,”
says William Leone, manager of office
services for Barack Ferrazzano.
managing the bill
UPS CampusShip ® helps the firm meet
the needs of those high-powered clients
by shipping documents and contracts so
that they arrive the next morning in pristine
shape. One especially helpful feature
is that CampusShip assists the allocation
of shipping costs by automatically
validating client or matter codes.
CampusShip’s code validation feature
helps particularly with the firm’s billing.
That’s just as important for the clients
as it is for the firm, Leone says.
The validation feature of
CampusShip makes it an especially
helpful tool because it saves time and
money. “You can’t bill something
through our billing system unless it’s got
a valid billing code,” says Leone, who
estimates that his office is relieved of
the expense of one full-time employee
thanks to CampusShip. “So there’s
really a cost recovery issue here.”
Before CampusShip, managing
the paper bill for shipping was an
arduous task. “You’d have to handenter
all this stuff and generate a
billing report from a 60-page bill,”
says Leone, adding that it could
take an employee five to six hours to
produce the billing. When a client or
matter code was missing, someone
had to physically track down the
code, Leone says.
Another important feature of
CampusShip is visibility. It allows users
to track a package in a matter of minutes
from their desktops. That saves
Leone and his team about eight hours
a week that was once spent tracking
the whereabouts of packages. Now,
with CampusShip, the person who
shipped a package can find out quickly
whether a shipment has arrived.
CampusShip also saves the firm
in what Leone calls soft costs:
headaches, hassles and stress on
the operations staff.
With CampusShip, a shipper can
request that UPS send the client an
e-mail with expected time of arrival
and a tracking number. That means
Barack Ferrazzano can spend less
time worrying about the status of
its packages and more time focusing
on its clients.
“The attorney’s expectation is that
our clients expect high-level performance
from us, so we expect the same
of the people who essentially act as
our agents,” Leone says.
To learn more, visit ups.com/campusship
Ship, and shape up your billing
UPS CampusShip ® is a powerful, no-cost shipping solution that can
save your company money by helping to manage services used
by employees throughout your organization, requiring references
or cost codes for the allocation of charges, and ensuring
deliveries to correct addresses through address validation and
e-mail notifications. CampusShip can help you improve efficiency
and provide better service to your customers.
To learn more,
visit ups.com/campusship
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Winter 2008 Compass 7