Professional & Legal Services · Business Intelligence
Hours that are actually true.
Which of our matter types actually make money?
Short answer
Join time recorded, fees billed and fees actually collected by matter type, then look at realisation rather than utilisation. Most firms measure how busy people are; far fewer measure which work converts that effort into collected fees, and the gap between the two is where quiet losses concentrate.
The situation
A concrete version of this.
A practice tracking chargeable hours diligently and reporting utilisation monthly, with partners confident about which work is profitable.
- Utilisation is reported and generally looks healthy
- Write-offs are handled matter by matter without aggregate view
- Fixed-fee work is assumed profitable because it was priced to be
- Nobody has compared recorded time against collected fees by matter type
Why it matters
Firms frequently discover that a work type they considered a strength is subsidised by another, because write-offs are absorbed locally and never aggregated into a pattern.
What gets built
Three things, in this order.
- 01
Agreed definitions first
What counts as chargeable, when a matter is complete, how write-offs are attributed. These conflicts are the reason existing reports disagree.
- 02
Realisation by matter type and by fee earner
Recorded time against billed fees against collected fees, aggregated so patterns become visible rather than staying anecdotal.
- 03
Plain-language querying with the query shown
Partners ask directly and see the query and source behind the answer, so a surprising number can be interrogated instead of dismissed.
The metric
Realisation rate by matter type
Utilisation measures busyness. Realisation measures whether busyness became money, which is the question partners actually need answered when deciding what work to take.
The boundary
What stays with a person
Every answer shows its query and source. Figures informing partner remuneration or statutory reporting are reviewed by a person before use.
Related
More for Professional & Legal Services.
Working example
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