Proudly featured in
Law Firm Profitability Metrics Every Lawyer Should Know
Are you charging enough to remain profitable?
Free eBook
With prices rising so much over the last year (global inflation is forecasted at 8.8% in 2022), it’s the right time to look at your current rates and see if you’re charging enough to remain profitable.
Running a successful law firm isn’t just about winning cases and billing clients—it’s about outlining clear goals and having an effective plan for achieving them. Measuring the performance of your law office is crucial in improving your firm’s profitability and enhancing operational health.
A surefire way to measure that performance is by using established profitability metrics. By using the right metrics, you can effectively analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your law firm’s services and make data-driven plans to improve practice management and increase profitability.
Why are financial metrics important for law firms?
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the most effective way to analyze the performance of your law office. By tracking the correct KPIs, you can measure your firm’s productivity, marketing efforts, and overall growth—and they can help you identify areas where improvement is needed.
Top 8 profitability metrics for your law firm to know
It can be daunting to decide which metrics are useful for profitability analysis at your law firm and which ones aren’t that helpful. With that in mind, we’re presenting our top eight profitability metrics for law firms.
1. Utilization Rate
A utilization rate is the number of billable hours your law office spends on billable projects compared to the total number of hours worked overall.
Law firms should aim to keep their utilization rates as high as possible. You can find your firm’s utilization rate by dividing the billable hours on record by the number of hours worked overall.
This data will help you see which lawyers are working efficiently and which need to log more billable hours.
2. Realization Rate
A realization rate shows how a legal professional’s recorded time entries compare with the fees they pay for.
You can view a realization rate as a percentage of the fees recorded divided by the fees collected. Issues with realization rates can affect law firm profitability and may highlight other concerns with business operations. For example, if realization rates are low across the board, your firm may have issues with time-consuming administrative tasks or an inefficient tech stack.
3. Case lifecycle cost
You may have some idea of the basic costs for an average case at your law firm, but it can be valuable to pay closer attention to the specific value of each case that your team takes on.
Tracking this data highlights how a case is managed in phases and where the most resources are utilized. In turn, you can better assess the volume of resources dedicated to a case and compare it to the time required to complete it. With this information, your law firm can adjust its pricing to match the resources needed for more challenging cases.
4. Outstanding accounts receivable
It’s essential to keep track of accounts receivable (the money owed to the company) at your law firm. Keeping on top of this data will help you to develop a strategy for handling overall debt and older invoices, as well as evaluate which clients are draining money from your firm and which clients you can depend on when deciding to take on cases.
5. Work-in-progress fees
A work-in-progress (WIP) report is the time a lawyer has worked, the value of that time, and expenses incurred throughout the work but not invoiced. WIP reports can be invaluable when comparing the overhead involved with a case against its possible outcome and are helpful when evaluating whether to take on similar cases in the future.
6 Billing Strategies to Grow Your Law Firm
Scaling your law firm doesn’t just mean adding more lawyers or increasing your number of clients. The best way to boost your law firm’s finances is to minimize your non-billable hours and make sure that every hour of your day is accounted for.
6. Revenue per attorney
Another helpful metric to pay attention to is revenue per attorney. Using practice management software to track this metric can provide valuable data to make informed decisions about which legal professionals are billing enough hours and which require improvement to increase your firm's profitability.
7. Billing turnover
Paying attention to your billing turnover rate is also essential. Your law firm should bill clients quickly to ensure consistent payment. A standard benchmark for effective billing turnover is less than 50 days once an attorney completes their work on a case.
8. Collection turnover
Your collection turnover rate is just as essential as billing turnover, if not more so. Keeping track of which clients are paying on time and which are consistently late will give you insights about what to expect in the future and help you make informed decisions about whether or not you want to do repeat business with a client.
Pricing your law firm for profitability
Pricing your legal services is crucial to your law firm’s profitability. Typically, it communicates a great deal about the quality of the services you provide to your clients and determines whether they’ll hire you. Many law firms still struggle to find the most appropriate price tag for their service and aren’t sure whether their prices will attract potential clients.
Here are some things to consider when pricing your legal services:
Think about the product you’re offering
Think of your services as a product. For example, consultation for legal advice and client representation are two different products. Additionally, you’ll need to identify your niche for clients to understand what services they can expect from your law office. Eventually, you can group the services differently and attach the fees for each package.
Identify your revenue model
Determine your revenue model by the firm’s operational requirements and market demands. These two factors are essential in choosing the firm’s business model and cash flow structure.
For instance, if the firm is often busy and incurs high daily operational costs, it will require a steady cash flow to sustain its operations. With that in mind, it’s easier to determine whether to bill per hour, has a flat fee, or charge contingency fees.
Additionally, it’s important to note that client cases vary, and a single revenue model may not suit all cases. Clients may also have preferences that determine if they use a firm’s services. However you choose to bill, it’s essential to use a proper legal case management solution that can support these different billing options.
Consider your customer acquisition costs
The growth of a business depends on the conversion rate of its marketing strategies. Similarly, a law firm makes profits from the number of customers served. This means a firm needs to carefully assess how effectively its marketing strategy drives traffic. The Customer Acquisition Costs shouldn’t exceed the profits generated by the clients acquired.
Determine your case value and customer lifetime value
The Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is the business value a customer brings to the firm over their lifetime as a client. This metric is important because it helps identify cost-effective strategies for maintaining existing customers and acquiring new ones.
Calculating a client’s LTV also helps assess whether the revenue model used to bill the client is profitable over the lifetime. For example, a flat fee per case may not fetch the same revenue as hourly billing over a client’s lifetime. The two revenue models may not be interchangeable between different products a firm offers, but their LTV will help the firm decide which product and market to focus on.
Understand your fixed costs
The firm’s expenses also impact the general profitability metrics. These expenses are often described as operational costs and may include office rent, technology, and support staff salaries.
A business that masters how to reduce operating costs without straining or compromising the quality of its services will always record higher profits. The same case applies to a law firm.
Tracking your metrics
If you want to grow your law firm, it’s essential to price your services correctly and track your KPIs consistently. Monitoring KPIs and integrating the data from them into your business plan enables you to increase your profitability and enhance your firm’s long-term operation. Deciding what to track and how to track it can be daunting and time-consuming.
Rocket Matter’s practice management software can take the analysis off your plate and free you up for more pressing work while helping you to make data-driven decisions.
Rocket Matter can also help your practice with:
- Workflow automation
- Increasing billable hours with time tracking and invoicing
- Customizable analytic reporting
- Robust integrations with services like QuickBooks and Microsoft 365
6 Billing Strategies to Grow Your Law Firm
Scaling your law firm doesn’t just mean adding more lawyers or increasing your number of clients. The best way to boost your law firm’s finances is to minimize your non-billable hours and make sure that every hour of your day is accounted for.
Share post: