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In-House Attorney Service Inc.
Core Business: Providing customized copy, mail and messenger services to the legal community
Revenues in 1992: $250,000
Revenues in 1997: $2.2 million
Employees in 1992: 2
Employees in 1998: 35
Goal: To provide quality copy/mail/messenger service at reasonable prices
Driving Force: Law firms’ increasing tendency to outsource their copy-room operations
By JASON BOOTH
Staff Reporter
Working in the company mailroom is often considered a dead-end job.
Craig Osborne saw it as an opportunity.
Today he is president of In-House Attorney Services Inc., a $2 million company that provides litigation support to the local legal community.
“An opportunity fell into my lap and I took off with it,” Osborne said, sitting in his company’s headquarters, which is crowded with copy machines, stacks of legal documents and twenty-something employees.
When Osborne joined the mailroom of Pachulski, Stang, Ziehl & Young in 1991, he was looking for nothing more than an easy paycheck as he worked toward landing a job as a policeman or private investigator.
Within a few months, though, he came to realize that there was a profitable niche for any company that could more effectively manage the vast amount of documentation that law firms produce.
“I saw how much money they were spending on separate mailing, copying and messenger services and I proposed that I take over all these services,” said Osborne. “By bringing all those services under one roof I could help them have more accountability at a fixed cost.”
At first, Osborne just drove around town, picking up legal documents from various law firms and delivering them to an employee stationed at the downtown courthouses, who would then file the documents with the appropriate office.
“I had no experience and no idea of how to do this job,” said Osborne. “The only way to learn was to talk to the other messengers I met and pick their brains.”
Six years later, In-House Attorney Service has 35 employees and more than $2 million in annual revenues. “The business just exploded,” said Osborne. The company generated revenues of $250,000 in its first year.
Law firms pay between $1,000 and $50,000 per month for In-House’s services. That may sound like a lot, but Osborne pointed out that a firm with 100 lawyers might require hundreds of deliveries each day. And with standard delivery and filing of a legal document running around $25, and court research costing 75 cents a minute, the fees can add up.
Besides the main office staff, In-House employs 15 messengers who travel around and between Century City and downtown in cars and on bikes. Another eight employees are stationed at the courts, where they file legal documents and do legal research for clients.
One client is Encino-based Robert L. Berger & Associates Inc., a business consultancy that generates legal documents for bankruptcy cases, some of which involve as many as 40,000 separate creditors. The consultancy uses In-House to handle the massive amounts of copying and filing required in such cases, usually under a tight deadline.
“I can sleep at night when I hand over the master document to In-House,” said John Vander Hooven, an associate at Robert L. Berger & Associates. “They have a great team that can turn that document around and get it filed.”
In-House also employs seven or so “on-site” managers who work within local law firms, running their copy/fax/mail operations on a full-time basis.
“The copy room was an area where we always had problems finding staff,” said Donna Carr, administrator for Pachulski, Stang, Ziehl & Young, where two In-House on-site managers are stationed. “The people we got didn’t care enough about their job, but the In-House guys are always in on time and they work hard.”
Other clients include the California Department of Corporations, the U.S. Trustees Office and Federal Bankruptcy Court.
Osborne said his greatest challenge has been to convince law firms that a relatively new company run by a guy in his 20s could handle their account.
“The hardest thing was getting that first shot,” he said. “Their first instinct is to overlook you because they think you are too small to handle the work.”
As In-House’s reputation and client list has grown (it currently has more than 100 customers), that’s becoming less of a hurdle, Osborne said.
The company gets most of its work through referrals, but also promotes itself in the legal community by sponsoring seminars by the Los Angeles Paralegal Association and similar groups.
Osborne’s longer-term goal is to open offices in Orange County, and later in other areas. He is also considering launching a cost-analysis service that would advise clients on how to better manage their copying, mail and messenger operations.
So far, Osborne has resisted cashing out, despite recently having received an offer from a larger company. “I’m not looking to become an overnight millionaire,” he said. “I just want to provide a good service to my clients.
