Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/83718
ILTA's 2012 Financial Management Poll Results we are on the go because we don't want to carry cassettes. That's why I get so frustrated when people tell me that cost recovery is dead. They tell me that times have changed and they don't make many copies any more. They tell me that clients have lost their taste for expense reimbursement. They tell me they are focusing on alternative fee arrangements. What they fail to realize is that cost recovery strategies have evolved. If you are still using a system designed for the needs of the legal market in the 1980s, of course you will think it doesn't work anymore. But the technology has evolved with the market. An Evolving Market When law firms started their cost recovery initiatives, primarily in the 1980s, it was simply "make a copy, bill for a copy." Ten years ago, 97 percent of law firms billed for photocopies and almost all of those bills got paid. Today, only 87 percent of firms bill for copies. And fewer copies are being made, leaving many law firm managers to wonder whether it makes sense to support a declining revenue stream. However, some fail to recognize that the process has changed. In the past, one original was printed from a typewriter or word processing device and then copied and distributed. Scanning was nonexistent, as was recovering for scans or prints. But today, scanning is common (and there are real costs, including storage space), and many documents are printed in large quantity directly to a network printer. As a result, 51 percent of law firms now recover for prints and 36 percent recover for scans — and these rates are increasing. ILTA White Paper 41