2021 Unsung Legal Heroes: Merchant & Gould Service Center

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At Merchant & Gould, the firm’s service center staff — site lead Breanna Blask, Derek Bray, Devon Johnson, Shanna Knazze, and Tou Fu Xiong — provides back-office services, which include incoming and outgoing mail, document prep for cases, printing, copying, faxing, and scanning, as well as tasks like hospitality and reception services.

During the pandemic, the service center broadened its offerings tremendously. While most of the firm members were in their home offices, service center staff came into the office daily, taking care of reception and ensuring the space was kept secure. Forced to become a digitized law firm, the service center team digitized the firm’s entire mail process and multiple functions of the finance department.

“Early on, remote work challenges were identified daily, and with each one, the service center team identified solutions and created ways to incorporate them into their existing tasks,” said Tracey Skjeveland, CFO and COO of Merchant & Gould.

In one instance, the service center worked with UPS to release critical expert witness testing instruments that were held up in France.
Another time the team helped ship encrypted hard drives to experts around the country when certain case-related information couldn’t be kept on any computer connected to the internet.

“We have a passion for our work that everyone at Merchant & Gould appreciates,” said Blask. “We continue to be on-site daily and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to support the firm.”

And if COVID continues to be a nuisance, the team already has the playbook for how to step in and keep on scoring.

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