Small Law Firm KPIs How to Measure Your Way to Greater Profits

Small Law Firm KPIs: How to Measure Your Way to Greater Profits teaches you the business basics you need to run your business successfully, improve client satisfaction and cash received, and have a solid measurement system in place that shows the value of your firm. The book provides straightforward guidance and examples on what performance metrics matter, how to collect those measurements, how to interpret and evaluate the results, and how to implement strategies to improve your profits. Many law firms fail even when they have an abundance of clients. Why? They fail to measure, track, and act on key performance indicators (KPIs) or performance metrics. KPIs are gaining attention in the legal field and, more importantly, firms are shifting their focus from measuring utilization and profit per partner to measuring outputs that include value for clients. Ultimately, you are providing valuable services to your clients and, therefore, it is critical to measure and monitor your client satisfaction in addition to the cash received.

I am a recovering professional accountant and business executive from Canada who went to law school in my forties to become a white collar crime prosecutor. Apparently a strong knowledge of John Grisham's writing and most of Law & Order does not a criminal lawyer make! Instead I added my consulting experience at Price Waterhouse to existing business and new intellectual property knowledge to create a software product that was initially thought to be for entrepreneurs and startups. Over the past three years, we have broadened the platform to include risk assessment, lead generation for numerous providers including accountants, consultants, and attorneys. I started a blog for Traklight about four years ago and now write for Forbes, American Bar Association s Law Technology Today and Law Student Division Before the Bar, and have contributed to Attorney at Work. My second career as a writer has become a combination of my thirty years of accounting, business, consulting, finance, law, technology and time teaching in Canada. Prior to law school, I worked as a Director of Finance for one of Canada's largest law firms and later in the engineering and construction industry. So the notion of time recording and billing by the hour is not new to me. Plus, my early days in Montreal as an auditor and later as a consultant had me recording my time for years. I worked in the then Big Eight, now the Big Four accounting firms, where I honed my skills around recording and billing hours and the associated metrics. In fact, the audit industry did flat fees way back in the 1980s. Our engagements were all budgeted based on hours needed to complete with an appropriate margin for partner profit. For most of my career, I have worked in the professional services industry and all thirty plus years in large and small business. In the early 1990s, I worked with key performance metrics within the education system in British Columbia. Applying key performance indicators (KPIs) to the education industry was novel at that time and when I worked at the Canadian law firm, we only had traditional utilization types of measures. When I was with a large Canadian law firm, the concept of budgeting for litigation was a foreign concept to the industry and as I dove into this further, I realized that some of the concepts around the legal industry business development and client satisfaction were still missing from legal KPIs. One of my university business professors coined the term start with the end in mind. My personal goal with this book is to provide practical information for solos and small law firms to better measure what they are doing well and what needs to be improved. The plan is to start with existing data and systems to create a simple set of KPIs. These KPIs will provide the information for attorneys to make data driven decisions to take the necessary actions to improve their practice in terms of business efficiencies and profits but ultimately to create satisfied clients who refer more business. Start small and understand what the metrics are telling you; make changes; and continue to refine as you improve your practice. I can be reached through the Traklight.com website or EvovleLawnow.com or engage on twitter @maryjuetten. #onwards