Benefits of a Law Firm Reporting Solution

A Reporting Solution for Law firm is designed to assist legal professionals with day-to-day law firm operations and help automate several reporting tasks. These solutions often include reporting around billing, collections, analysis of the firm’s performance, return on investment, client management, attorney performances etc. 

Office managers and attorneys utilize such solution to ensure their businesses run smoothly and critical information is safely shared and easily accessible. Legal reporting solution often integrates or comes bundled with legal case management and client management software to help with time tracking, accounting, and workflow management of a law firm.

Legal reporting solution help lawyers make data-driven decisions when devising legal strategies.

How do Law Firms Use Legal Reporting Solution?

Law firms can use legal reporting solution in a variety of ways, often depending on the size of the firm and areas of practice. Although the methodology may seem complex, the goal is simple: allow lawyers to make informed, data-driven decisions to maximize their success. When lawyers have questions, legal reporting solution can help them better arrive at the answers with predictions based on data. Here are few practical questions legal reporting solution can answer to help attorneys make their practice more profitable and efficient.

• • Am I quoting the right fees for Fixed fee?

  • Is fee allocation a challenge or too time-consuming for your team?

  • What is my monthly write-down by employee?

  • Do I have matters that are not touched over 4 weeks?

By turning to legal reporting solutions, lawyers can gather invaluable insights into how long it’ll take to turn their business into growth and profits. It may be based on matters, client intake, hiring the right attorneys and other data points. Not only will this information allow law firms to plan and allocate precious resources, but it will also help avoid unrealistic expectations.

To understand more on the benefits of a legal reporting solution, let us consider a few reports that illustrate what LawKPIs has to offer you. These reports have been used extensively by attorneys and the comprehensive outcome of these reports has led to a huge business growth and profits to the attorneys and their law firms.

1. Fee Allocation Report –

Description: LawKPIs, Fee Allocation Report is designed to give law firms a detailed view of the time entries each user has billed (and collected) on a Matter along with the discounts. This report can be used to determine the percent contribution of each attorney on the billed time invoice for both; firm-level and invoice level. Firms can use the report information to formulate the bonus/incentive structure for attorneys.

Fee Allocation Report displays the detailed information of the serviced time each attorney has billed and collected on a matter. The service allocation column refers to the percentage of billed time on an invoice that a user is responsible for. 

The chart in the main report shows the service allocation of each attorney in percentage.

The tabular part of the report provides each attorney:

• • Billed Hours: Hours worked and considered while billing.

  • Billed Non-Discount Time: The overall time which has been billed.

  • Billed Discount Time: The time which has been billed after applying the discount.

  • Billed Discount: Any discount applied while billing the time.

  • Service Allocation: It is the contribution of an attorney towards the matters and activities which have been billed. This is calculated as: Rate of an attorney * hours worked for an invoice / Invoice Amount.

  • Billed Time Collected: Revenue collected for the billed hours.

  • Billed Time Outstanding: Amount outstanding to be collected.

Drill through report:

• Fee allocation details.

The drill-through report displays the more detailed information about the fee allocation of each attorney with invoice level breakdown of the serviced time. It includes:

• • Matter.

  • Customer.

  • Invoice.

  • Practice Area.

  • Invoice Date.

  • Paid Date.

  • Billed Hours.

  • Billed Discount Time Billed Time.

  • Service Allocation.

  • Billed Discount.

  • Bill Paid.

  • Billed Outstanding.

Report Filters: - The report is driven by the invoice year and invoice month filter. For any additional slice and dice of the data, you can make use of filters – Customer, Practice Area, and Matter.

2. Realization Report –

Description: LawKPIs, Realization report provides the firm-wide realization rate. It gives the wide amount of billable work recorded that is actually put on an invoice, minus discounts. It measures the difference between what was billable amount of time spent and what percentage of that billable amount was billed.

This tabular report lists the matters along with billable amount vs billed amount and the realization rate for each matter. Use this report to track the variance between billable amount and billed amount for each matter.

Filters: The report displays the current year realization by default. This can also be analyzed for other years using the Year filter. Additionally, an Attorney filter is provided to analyze the attorney-wise realization rate.

3. Attorney Utilization Rate Report –

Description: LawKPIs, Attorney Utilization Rate report helps to identify attorneys who spend more time on billable tasks rather than the non-billable, administrative tasks. The report also allows a feature to set an auto alert if utilization drops below target.

A comprehensive report for attorneys that gives their performance over target hours against the worked hours.

4. WIP and Trust –

Description: LawKPIs, WIP and Trust report is designed to give an overview of WIP and Trust amount per matter. It helps in understanding / analyzing the cashflow from each matter.  If the trust account balance (fund) is not sufficient, the trust invoice (recharge request) can be raised.  Below are the important fields:

• • Matter: The name / description of the matter.

  • WIP Amount: The amount which is likely to be billed.

  • Has Trust Account:  It says Yes if the matter belongs to trust account.

  • Retainer Threshold Amount: the minimum amount to be maintained for a trust account for that matter.

  • Trust Balance Amount: The available amount in the trust account for that matter.

  • Transfer: The amount that can be transfer from the available trust balance the report can be analyzed further using a list of filters:

    • Client #

    • Matter #

    • Matter Status

    • Originating Attorney

    • Responsible Attorney

    • Practice Area

Summary –

Legal reporting solution are indispensable for any law firm seeking to maximize productivity and profitability. Running any business requires a multitude of decisions. At any law firm, every decision can have an outsized impact, sometimes with unintended outcomes. By joining the increasing group of law firms who use reporting and analytics solution, lawyers can ensure they make informed decisions that will take their practice to the next level.