Who They Are:
Analysis Group (AG) provides economic and financial consulting to law firms and corporations regarding complex litigation, regulatory proceedings, and corporate strategic planning. With a number of offices in North America, some of the country's top economists represent AG in high profile legal cases.
How Writing Plays a Role:
Writing is one of AG’s core competencies. Typical writing projects include expert reports, marketing letters, professional papers, project proposals, and court testimonies. From principals to research assistants, employees spend between 30 percent and 60 percent of their time writing. A comprehensive analysis indicated several writing issues:
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Lack of clear writing
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Inefficient writing habits
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Enormous amounts of time completing documents
These concerns cost AG time and money. Clarifying key issues within a document required numerous callbacks. Rewrites due to a lack of clarity took up valuable time. Old organizing tools took far more hours than necessary. For instance, one of AG's clients was regularly returning poorly organized documents for clarification. In another case, a vice president restarted his documents an average of eight times before he felt organized.
The Solution:
Business Writing That Counts! initially conducted an assessment of writing issues in order to develop customized writing workshops. The classes, presented nationally, focused on economic reports that are sent to litigation attorneys. Additionally, depositions, client correspondence, and white papers were reviewed and addressed in one-on-one sessions.
Results of Training:
According to Chris Pavek, former Vice-President, participants reduced their writing time by 10 percent immediately after the training. Taking into consideration training costs, varied salaries of the staff, and the number of writing hours saved by each staff member, AG estimates a savings of over $268,349. AG is a rapidly growing company and with these savings the firm can take on even more caseloads than previously anticipated.