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Problem 1 - Operations Management

My-law.com is an online legal startup that allows customers to interact with lawyers via email and phone before formally retaining them. Customers email questions to my-lawyer@my-law.com between 8am-6pm, with an average of 10 emails per hour. One lawyer responds to emails, which takes an average of 5 minutes to write, with a standard deviation of 4 minutes. Under the current policy: a) The average wait time for a customer response is 5 minutes. b) A lawyer would receive about 100 emails in a 10-hour day. c) The lawyer could dedicate about 3.5 hours to pursuing large settlement cases. Under a new

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179 views1 page

Problem 1 - Operations Management

My-law.com is an online legal startup that allows customers to interact with lawyers via email and phone before formally retaining them. Customers email questions to my-lawyer@my-law.com between 8am-6pm, with an average of 10 emails per hour. One lawyer responds to emails, which takes an average of 5 minutes to write, with a standard deviation of 4 minutes. Under the current policy: a) The average wait time for a customer response is 5 minutes. b) A lawyer would receive about 100 emails in a 10-hour day. c) The lawyer could dedicate about 3.5 hours to pursuing large settlement cases. Under a new

Uploaded by

isgigles157
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Problem 1. My-law.

com is a start-up trying to cater to customers in search of legal services who


are intimidated by the idea of talking to a lawyer or just too lazy to enter a law office. My-
law.com allows for extensive interaction between lawyers and their customers via telephone and
the Internet. This process is used in the upfront part of the customer interaction, largely
consisting of answering some basic customer questions prior to entering a formal relationship.
In order to allow customers to interact with the firms lawyers, customers are encouraged
to send emails to my-lawyer@my-law.com. From there, the incoming emails are distributed to
the lawyer who is currently on call. Given the broad skills of the lawyers, each lawyer can
respond to each incoming request.
Emails arrive from 8 a.m to 6 p.m at a rate of 10 emails per hour (coefficient of variation
for the arrivals is 1). Assume that there is exactly one lawyer on call, that is, sitting at his or
her desk waiting for incoming emails, and this lawyer works the entire day. It takes the lawyer,
on average, 5 minutes to write the response email. The standard deviation of this is 4 minutes.

a. What is the average time a customer has to wait for a response to his/her email, ignoring
any transmission times? Note: This includes the time it takes the lawyer to start writing
the email and the actual writing time.

b. How many emails will a lawyer have received at the end of a 10-hour day?

c. When not responding to emails, the lawyer on call is encouraged to actively pursue cases
that could potentially lead to large settlements. How much time on a 10-hour day can a
My-law.com lawyer dedicate to this activity (assume the lawyer can instantly switch
between emails and work on a settlement)?

To increase the responsiveness of the firm, the board of My-law.com proposes a new
operating policy. Under the new policy, the response would be highly standardized, reducing
the standard deviation for writing the response to 0.5 minute. The average writing time would
remain unchanged.

d. How would the amount of time the lawyer can dedicate to the search for a large
settlement cases change with this new operating policy?

e. How would the average time a customer has to wait for the response to his/her email
change? Note: This includes the time until the lawyer starts writing the email and the
actual writing time.

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