By Debbie Foster, CEO, Affinity Consulting Group 

Moving Beyond Billable Hours 

Law firm profitability is often viewed in simplistic terms: the more billable hours attorneys log, the more profitable the firm becomes. But the reality of assessing profitability is far more nuanced. Profitability can be sliced and diced in several ways — by practice area, client, lawyer, and matter profitability, and more — and your firm has to determine what’s appropriate to analyze. 

That can get complicated, but my goal with this article is to help make profitability analysis feel doable by looking at just one example — practice area profitability. We’ll look at how you can use practice area information to make strategic decisions about resource allocation, maximizing your profit margins, and maintaining a healthy work environment for your attorneys and staff. 

Understand Attorney Cost Rates to Set a Profitability Foundation 

Before we can begin analyzing profitability by practice area, we must understand what it costs your firm to provide its services by determining each attorney’s cost rate. 

This is essentially the hourly cost of employing them, including salary, benefits, and overhead expenses such as office space and technology. This rate forms the foundation for assessing whether your firm is pricing its services appropriately and whether each attorney is contributing to overall profitability. 

Calculating attorney cost rates involves several components: 

Attorney cost rates include base salary, benefits, overhead and practice area specifics


Calculate the cost rate for each attorney by adding their salary and benefits to their share of overhead expenses. This will give you a baseline cost per hour for each attorney, which can then be compared to their billing rate to determine their contribution to profitability. 

Practice Area Profitability: Analyzing Where the Firm Thrives 

Now that you’ve established attorney cost rates, you're ready to analyze profitability by practice area. This is often a relevant category to assess within a firm because it can reveal valuable insights that might not be apparent from a high-level overview of your firm's financials.  

For example, a firm may appear profitable overall but harbor unprofitable practice areas that are being subsidized by more successful ones. This situation can lead to resentment among partners and potentially affect staff retention.   

Not all practice areas are created equal — some may generate substantial revenue but come with high costs, while others may be highly efficient profit centers. 

You can understand practice area profitability at both a high level and a granular level. By breaking down profitability by practice area, firms can identify which areas are driving the most profit and which may be underperforming. Here are some guidelines to approach this analysis: 

You want to regularly assess the profitability of each practice area by tracking revenue, costs, and utilization rates. Adjust resource allocation to ensure the right attorneys are working on the right matters to maximize profitability. 

Leverage and the Concept of 'Highest and Best Use' 

Another crucial factor that impacts profitability is how work is allocated across the firm. The concept of “highest and best use” can help ensure that the right person is doing the right work at the right time. This is particularly important for maximizing profitability in practice areas with mixed levels of complexity. 

Associate and partner-level attorneys, staff, and technology handle different types of law firm work

Conduct regular reviews of workload distribution to ensure that partners, associates, and support staff are all working at their highest and best use. This will help optimize profitability while maintaining a balanced workload across the firm. 

Benchmarking and Profitability Tracking 

Benchmarking plays an important role in understanding whether your firm is performing as well as it should be. You can benchmark against both internal and external standards to identify areas for improvement and set realistic goals for growth. 

Use benchmarking data to set performance targets for practice areas and individual attorneys. This will help create accountability and ensure that everyone in the firm is aligned with profitability goals. 

Turn Insights into Action 

Maximizing profitability requires moving beyond increasing billable hours to taking a holistic approach. This should include understanding attorney cost rates first, and then analyzing a category that makes sense for your firm, such as practice area performance. With this combined cost rate at practice area data, you can begin allocating resources strategically — all to identify hidden opportunities for growth, make data-driven decisions, and ensure long-term profitability for the firm. 

By Paige Roncke, Chief Revenue Officer, Centerbase

The legal industry is at a critical inflection point where law firms can no longer identify only as legal services providers. Law firms must also be data and technology companies in order to effectively compete in the market for long-term success.  

I discussed this new landscape with Debbie Foster, CEO of Affinity Consulting, during a webinar on law firm profitability. A substantial portion of that conversation was rooted in the theory that profitability is more than a simple math formula of revenue minus cost; rather, it’s about understanding your firm's opportunity to maximize revenue streams while also minimizing costs without compromising quality of legal services.  

It’s a misnomer to assume the application of technology only minimizes cost. Yes, technology has a critical role in automating administrative tasks, optimizing billing processes and creating comprehensive and speedy communications both internally and externally. However, technology is best utilized when the full power of software is applied to maximizing potential revenue streams.  

This can be software-driven enhancements like improving time capture to create more billable hours, building reports that provide deeper insights into profitability at various levels — from individual attorneys to entire practice areas — through data clarity and availability, and utilizing that data to retain and attract stronger talent that can bill at higher rates. 

In other words, as Debbie stated, “Technology should be used as a revenue multiplier.” And multiplied revenue leads to greater profitability. 

While many firms have already made investments in technology, they may not be fully utilizing these tools. Let’s examine how technology can enhance law firm profitability by improving time tracking, managing billing, and providing actionable insights into the firm’s financial health. We'll also discuss common technology pitfalls and how to avoid them, so your firm can make the most of your technology investments. 

Where Technology Drives Profitability in Law Firms 

With the right tools, firms can unlock efficiencies that translate directly into higher profits. The key is knowing how to leverage technology effectively to improve law firm profitability, such as: 

Technology Shouldn’t Be the First Budget Reduction 

Despite these opportunities to use technology as a revenue multiplier to drive significant profitability gains, many firms struggle to fully leverage the tools they have — and that often leads to cutting technology costs. But cutting costs isn’t a sustainable path to profitability. 

Consider these common pitfalls to avoid so you can maximize your technology to advance your revenue streams. 

1. Underutilizing Software Features 

Many law firms invest in technology but only use a small fraction of the available features. For example, your firm might not be taking full advantage of your practice management software’s time tracking, billing, and reporting features that could improve efficiency. Leveraging a tool’s full capabilities can not only improve efficiency but help reduce stress at work, too. Encourage continuous learning, where attorneys and staff explore new features and share tips for improving efficiency. 

2. Lack of Ongoing Training and Support 

Too often, technology implementation is treated as a one-time event rather than an ongoing process. A lot of effort goes into the rollout and not enough into continuous training to learn about the tool after it’s been implemented.  

As Debbie says:

“We really need to marry up our technology spend with building a culture of training.” 

Pay attention to new updates and features, and make sure your staff learns how to use them by providing ongoing training and support. Consider hosting monthly lunch-and-learn sessions to discuss new ways to use your tools more effectively. 

3. Not Using Technology to Attract and Retain Talent 

One of the best things technology can do for your firm is standardize processes. Sure, every lawyer prefers to do certain things differently, but technology can help you agree on standardizing core elements of practicing law and running a firm. The result goes beyond efficiency. 

New associates coming out of law school want to gain experience with modern technology — and they expect it. Maximizing your technology presents your firm as forward-thinking and committed to providing resources to work effectively, and that can help you stand out as an employer of choice.  

Newer technology presents employees with an enhanced user experience with fewer clicks, simpler and more modern interfaces, and intuitive ease of use. This streamlined experience over older systems leads to higher job satisfaction, boosting your talent retention and attraction. 

The Future of Law Firm Profitability is Powered by Technology 

Technology is no longer optional — it’s essential for creating a long-term competitive edge. Whether it’s automating time tracking, streamlining billing, or analyzing profitability across practice areas, the right tools can make all the difference in how efficiently your firm operates. 

By embracing technology and ensuring it is fully integrated into your firm’s processes, you can unlock new levels of profitability, improve client satisfaction, and future-proof your business for years to come. The key is not just investing in technology but leveraging it to its full potential—and continuously improving how you use it through ongoing training and fostering a culture the embraces technology. 

Why Profitability Matters for Law Firms 

Profitability is one of the most critical measures of success for any law firm. But while it’s easy to fall into the mindset of “more billable hours equal more profit,” the reality is more complex. Simply focusing on the standard math equation of revenue minus expenses equals profitability doesn’t always tell the full story of a firm’s financial health

In a recent webinar, “The Next Generation of Law Firm Profitability,” Debbie Foster, CEO of Affinity Consulting, and Paige Roncke, Chief Revenue Officer at Centerbase, explored the essential components of law firm profitability, moving beyond the basic math to consider how different practice areas, lawyer cost and billing rates, client profitability, revenue generation, and cost management play a crucial role. 

How Do Law Firms Calculate Profitability? 

At a foundational level, profitability is calculated as revenue minus expenses. It's a straightforward equation, but there are multiple factors influencing law firms’ revenue and expenses.  

“While the simple math for profitability is accurate,” Debbie says, “in law firms, we need to look beyond what the profitability number is to what the profitability number could be in order to maximize what is left.” 

To do this, you can define your firm’s profitability inputs by considering:  

“There are many ways to look at profitability, so you have to double down and figure out what combination of these inputs makes sense for your firm, and how will you track it,” Debbie suggests. 

Let’s take a look at where to start. 

The 5 Key Drivers of Law Firm Profitability 

To move beyond the basic profitability equation, analyze the underlying factors that influence both revenue and expenses at your firm. By doing so, you can identify opportunities to maximize profits and make data-driven decisions. Here are five key areas to assess in your firm. 

1. Lawyer Cost Structure and Billable Rates 

Each lawyer in a firm has a different billing rate and cost structure. Partners might bill at a higher rate, but they come with higher compensation. Associates, on the other hand, may have lower billing rates but can be profit centers if their work is leveraged effectively. 

Take the time to figure out each of your lawyer’s cost rate — what it costs them to provide their services — factoring in their salary, benefits, office space costs, and technology costs. By calculating this cost, you can determine the minimum amount each lawyer needs to bill to cover their expenses and contribute to the firm's profitability. 

Example of a lawyer cost rate calculation

  1. Start with the lawyer's annual salary — for easy math, we’ll use $120,000. 
  2. Calculate the monthly salary: $120,000 / 12 = $10,000 
  3. Factor in billable hours. Divide the monthly salary by the lawyer’s expected monthly billable hours to get an hourly rate: $10,000 / 100 billable hours = $100 per hour 
  4. Add benefits and overhead. Factor in the cost of benefits per hour (e.g., $30/hour) and overhead per hour (e.g., $70/hour) to get the lawyer’s hourly cost rate: $100 per hour + $30 hourly benefits + $70 hourly overhead = $200 hourly cost rate           
Example of how to calculate a lawyer's cost rate

Actionable insight: Now that you know how much it costs for this lawyer to provide their services, you can better determine a billable rate that will enable profitability. Follow this method to calculate the hourly cost rate for each lawyer and compare it to their hourly billing rate. If a lawyer’s cost rate is higher than their billing rate, this could indicate a profitability problem. Ensure that work is assigned based on each lawyer's cost-effectiveness, balancing their rates with the profitability of the cases they handle.  

2. Practice Area Profitability 

Not all practice areas are equally profitable. Some might generate higher revenue but come with greater expenses, while others may be less lucrative but require fewer resources. For example, family law cases might involve more administrative work, while corporate law could bring in larger retainers but demand more expensive expertise. 

Actionable Insight: Start by analyzing each practice area’s cost rate to determine its profitability. Track the hours billed, expenses incurred, and the average rate charged. By understanding which areas are most profitable, you can make strategic decisions about where to focus your resources and who to leverage in your firm for different types of work. 

“Understanding cost structure gives insight into appropriate billing rates for attorneys within a practice group,” Paige says. “With this information, you can balance the practice area’s work, having attorneys with a lower cost rate handle work that doesn’t require a senior partner’s expertise, which starts to help you adjust your profitability for that practice area.”  

3. Client Profitability 

Not all clients are created equal in terms of profitability. Some may require more time, resources, and attention, while others are more straightforward and generate higher profit margins. By understanding which clients contribute most to the firm's profitability, you can make more informed decisions about where to invest your time and effort. 

Actionable Insight: Regularly review client profitability by tracking the time spent on each client’s matters and the revenue they generate. This will help identify high-maintenance clients who consume resources without delivering commensurate revenue, enabling the firm to renegotiate terms or focus on more profitable clients. 

4. Revenue Generation 

Maximizing revenue might seem like a straightforward goal, but the practical aspects of capturing all billable time, diligently following up on leads, minimizing write-offs, and optimizing accounts receivable collections often fall by the wayside. It's common to underestimate the significance of these seemingly mundane yet critical tasks that can make or break your firm's profitability. 

Graphic showing areas for law firms to optimize revenue

Actionable Insight: Maximizing these revenue-generating tasks comes down to having the processes and tools in place to set your firm up for success. Paige sums up four actionable areas to optimize your firm’s revenue. 

5.Cost Management 

Law firms have three main expense categories — personnel, office space, and technology — and managing these costs is another important factor in a firm’s profitability. However, it’s not necessarily about minimizing expenses, but rather optimizing what you spend.  

“It’s important to not waste money,” Debbie says, “and you do that by making sure you’re leveraging what you buy. You need to think about people planning, space planning, and technology planning to utilize them all effectively.”  

Actionable insight: Using technology as an example, if you invest in cloud-based software but don’t review the updates and learn about new features regularly, then you’re not leveraging the software — or your money — to its full capacity. Similarly, when you hire new staff members but provide little training on the firm’s processes, technology, and culture, you’re not optimizing personnel or technology, and you’re risking additional expenses through attrition if staff members become disengaged to the point of resigning. 

Law Firm Profitability is About More Than Just the Bottom Line 

Understanding profitability isn’t just about looking at the revenue minus expenses equation. It’s about going beyond basic math and exploring how you can optimize each component of your business. By focusing on core drivers of profitability — cost and billing structure, practice area profitability, client profitability, revenue generation, and cost management — your firm can uncover opportunities for long-term growth and profitability. 

Stay tuned for our next article, which will focus on the impact of technology and how to leverage it for law firm profitability. 

As the legal landscape becomes more complex and competitive, adopting modern law practice management software is one of the best ways to help your law firm keep up. Legal technology can greatly increase your competitive advantage, make your operations more efficient, and continuously enhance client service. 

However, this journey isn’t as simple as purchasing the first legal software you come across online. It involves a step-by-step process of assessing your firm’s needs, conducting due diligence to select the right vendor for your firm, and implementing the software. 

Based on the latest insights from Centerbase's 2024 Guide to Buying Law Practice Management Software, this article will help you navigate and simplify the path to selecting the best legal practice management software for your firm. 

Why Law Firms Change Technology 

Law firms turn to technology for a variety of proactive and reactive reasons. Proactively, firms seek opportunities to increase efficiency, improve client service, and maximize cost savings. Reactively, they are compelled to switch software when faced with challenges such as missing functionality, the need for remote work capabilities, system consolidation, data security issues, or the need to retire an old server

Proactive and reactive reasons for choosing law firm software

Assessing Law Firm Technology Needs 

Before embarking on the legal technology journey, take an inventory of your firm’s current technology infrastructure. Then, ask your team to identify gaps your current tech stack doesn’t fill to understand their vision to optimize law practice operations. 

By building a cross-functional team to represent your law firm's software user base and setting expectations for what the new software should accomplish, law firms can outline a clear vision for their technological needs. Be sure to consider budgets during this assessment, too.  

Choosing a Legal Software Vendor 

Once the technology needs have been assessed, the next step involves selecting legal practice management software that's right for your firm. This process requires a comprehensive review of potential vendors based on selection criteria that go beyond cost.  

Features and capabilities to consider in law firm software 

Create a short list of best law software vendors 

Now that you've researched various software vendors' offerings, make a short list of finalists, send them a request for proposal, and set up demonstrations. 

Collect your findings on how well each legal practice management software meets your team's expectations, conduct reference checks, and review terms of service and service level agreements. 

You're now ready to score the proposals, run pilot tests of the best options, run the numbers, and make a choice. 

Implementing New Legal Software 

With a vendor selected, the next step is implementation. This process may include stages like data migration, setup, configuration, and testing.

Training is also indispensable at this stage as it is vital for maximizing the return on the investment in law firm technology while also driving successful software adoption.

What to look for in effective technology training

Just as you're evaluating the software's overall ability to meet your firm's needs, you should put equal emphasis on understanding the vendor's process for creating a smooth legal software implementation

Moving Forward with New Legal Practice Software 

Keep in mind, legal technology isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. It needs to be the right fit for your law firm to truly optimize operations and stay competitive in the fast-evolving legal industry. 

With the meticulous planning, careful selection, and continuous learning we've outlined, you'll be on your way to using technology as a powerful tool to enhance efficiency, improve client service, and contribute to your firm's overall success. 

Get our complete guide to buying legal practice management software for detailed tips and considerations to choose the right technology for your firm.  

In today's legal landscape, staying competitive and efficient is crucial. If your firm isn’t using an all-in-one legal practice management software to streamline firm and client operations, you’re missing out on the highest level of efficiency and competitive advantages to set your firm apart. The cost of not having such software is too great to not act.

Multiple types of productivity software exist to improve law firms’ efficiency with certain tasks, such as client intake, case management, and timekeeping. But having multiple disparate systems requires opening each one, toggling among them when switching tasks, leading to less efficiency overall, not more.

Yet, many law firms hesitate to adopt legal practice management software that could solve their efficiency woes, underestimating what law firms stand to lose by choosing the status quo. Just like neglecting IT infrastructure, ignoring legal technology can lead to significant financial and operational downsides. 

But why do law firm hesitate to adopt legal software? According to Forbes, choosing not to upgrade software is rooted in common fears, including:

What’s the cost of not having legal practice management software?

Without legal practice management software, you’ll miss out on operational efficiency, best practices, and firm culture benefits that optimize your law practice. Let’s dive into some of the greatest potential costs associated with not implementing an all-in-one legal technology platform.

Efficient and accurate accounting

Building your general ledger accounting into your timekeeping, billing and accounting operations in one platform gives you the most efficient and accurate accounting operations.

Integrating data for each of these processes means you enter the data once, and it populates everywhere. This helps your firm avoid double-entry recordkeeping between multiple software systems, and it ensures consistent data across the entire system.

Without the right legal practice management software, you might even miss out on the ability to integrate general ledger firm and trust accounting in one place, which enables reconciliation across your client and firm accounts. With such a system, you can track every dollar in and out of your law firm.

Loss of Billable Hours 

Without streamlined processes, you and your attorneys are wasting time on administrative tasks. Legal practice management software automates billing, scheduling, and document management, freeing up time for billable work. This directly impacts revenue, as even a small increase in billable hours can lead to substantial financial gains over time. 

Data Security Risks 

Without robust software solutions, your firm could be at risk of data breaches. With the high degree of sensitive client information you handle, a data breach can be costly and damage your firm’s reputation. Legal practice management software often includes secure data storage and encryption, ensuring client confidentiality and compliance with legal standards. 

Client Dissatisfaction 

Efficient case management is key to client satisfaction. Manual processes can lead to delays, missed deadlines, and errors, frustrating clients. Legal practice management software enhances communication, tracks case progress, and ensures deadlines are met, leading to better client relationships and retention. 

Competitive Disadvantage 

Law firms that use technology risk falling behind competitors who are more tech-savvy. Legal practice management software enables firms to leverage analytics and reporting, improve marketing efforts, and offer better services, helping them stay competitive in a crowded market. 

An investment or a cost?

Investing in legal practice management software is not just about improving efficiency; it's about protecting your firm's financial health and reputation. The cost of doing nothing can far exceed the investment in the right software solution. If you're considering enhancing your practice with technology, now is the time to act. Don't let your firm fall behind — explore the benefits of legal practice management software today. 

As you search for new law practice management software, you shouldn’t settle for a painful implementation process — which is the largest obstacle preventing law firms from embracing new and better software. 

With the right components in place, a legal software platform can provide an accurate and efficient implementation with minimal business disruption — so you can start making strategic and profitable business decisions immediately.    

Here’s what you should look for in a well-mapped legal software implementation process when searching for the right vendor. 

Professional People to Organize Legal Software Implementation

As you’re narrowing down your law practice management software options, ask each vendor if they have a dedicated team that will focus on delivering an exceptional implementation.  

A comprehensive implementation team should include project managers and data specialists that organize your implementation and deliver accurate data imports, and support, training, and customer success teams that champion your firm’s success throughout your firm’s experience — including post-implementation.  

Proprietary Implementation Processes  Minimize Disruption

What is the actual implementation process for each vendor? You’ll want to understand how thoughtfully they’ve mapped each phase of implementation, and what tools will be used to migrate your firm’s data to the new software.  

Any software implementation must deliver correct data in the way you intend to use it and do so with minimal business disruption. Ask the vendors specific questions about each phase of the implementation process to understand if they can deliver on this expectation. 

Initial software implementation phases  

The early stages of an implementation process should:  

Data migration and testing phase 

Accurate data migration is critical to successful implementation of law practice management software that your team wants to use. Look for the following in vendors’ data migration phases: 

Configuration, testing and training phase 

Having accurate, ready-to-use data in the system allows your team to start learning how to use the new software. Ask vendors how they handle: 

Final software transition and beyond 

When the official switch to the new software begins, you’ll want it to be as seamless as possible. Vendors should have plans to minimize business disruption by walking your team through: 

Of course, you also need to feel confident a vendor will continue to help your team reap the benefits of the new software as your firm grows and changes. 

Why organized implementations for legal practice management software matter

Your new legal technology investment should help your firm become more efficient and profitable. If it offers the features to help you accomplish your firm’s goals, ensuring it also has an efficient and accurate implementation process will allow you to extract that value from day one of using the software.  

Be selective, and hopefully you’ll experience a software implementation that minimizes business disruption like Susie Saldivar, Office Manager at Gaido & Fintzen. 

“The onboarding process [with our legal software vendor] could have been terrible and glitchy, but, instead, it was super dreamy," she says. "I couldn’t have asked for a better onboarding experience. Everything went great." 

Get all the details for what makes an accurate and timely implementation here

Every service-based business wants to get paid faster, and law firms are no different. Imagine getting paid 20 percent faster. What kind of a difference would that make to your law firm’s cash flow, profitability, and ability to invest in growth?  

One of the best ways to ensure an efficient billing and payment cycle is to make it easy for clients to pay — and that requires having a modern legal billing solution with embedded payments processing in place.  

This allows your clients to pay directly from within their digital invoice and gives them options for payment types, such as credit and debit card payments, automated clearing house (ACH) and eChecks.  

Payments-related challenges law firms face today 

The ability to get paid on time requires efficient processes and software to support them —  timekeeping for billable hours, effective billing templates, accurate billing cycles, and the list goes on.  

But even with processes and systems in place, be aware of common bottlenecks that can slow down legal billing processes and negatively affect your clients’ on-time payment rates — and your firm’s profitability. 

1. Inefficient pre-billing process 

Your law practice’s monthly billing process likely begins with compiling billed time and related expenses for each client into a pre-bill. If your attorneys have tracked their time diligently, this part of the process should be smooth.  

Reviewing, revising and finalizing the prebills is where slowdowns occur. A lead attorney must review the prebill, add notes, and adjust costs as needed before the bill can be finalized and sent to the client.  

If you have electronic pre-bill functionality in your legal billing solution, you can speed up this process by automatically moving pre-bills through the approval chain. 

Jennifer Landrum, office manager at Griffith, Jay & Michel, LLP, estimates it used to take her about two weeks to complete her firm’s billing cycle. Using the pre-bill feature within Centerbase, she now saves a minimum of three days each month on billing alone. 

2. Complicated, multi-step billing processes 

Hopefully, your law firm’s billing software automates many of the routine billing and payment functions, such as calculating billing interest and tax, applying existing client funds to bills, and sending overdue bill reminders. If you conduct these manually, however, you’re missing out on significant efficiencies. 

Electronic legal billing and payments software can make your billing process more efficient by generating draft bills, taking your firm’s fee structure into account, and customizing the billing and payment process to your firm’s needs. 

Jane Corser, firm administrator at Latham, Luna, Eden & Beaudine, LLP, says that when her firm switched to the Centerbase platform, her billing cycle improved from 10 days to just three days. 

3. Lack of flexible and easy payment options for clients 

To get paid faster, use immediacy to your law firm’s advantage. The sooner a client receives an invoice after services are rendered, the sooner they’ll pay their bill because the services are fresh in their mind.  

Even if you send invoices soon after providing services, however, the likelihood of clients paying their bill on time drops significantly if you don’t make it easy for them to do so. 

It’s important to offer flexible payment options that fit your clients’ needs. Offering billing arrangements, printed or digital bills, online payments and multi-payor functionality for clients to choose from increases their on-time payments. 

How payments challenges are being solved in the legal industry 

When it comes to law firms’ billing and payments processes, efficiency and flexibility are key. The best way to achieve both is to have a legal billing solution with an embedded payments feature. Embedded payments can: 

What law firms should look for in a payment solution 

When researching legal billing and payments solutions for your law firm, consider these features to help you select the right solution: 

Manage the Business of Your Firm with Ease 

Embedding payments into your billing solution makes it easy for clients to do business with you and allows you to manage the business of your firm with automation and simplicity. Learn how you can accomplish all this with Centerbase Payments, embedded in the Centerbase platform.  

Modernizing your law practice management software is an enticing — and strategic — end goal. Whether that means moving your firm’s data from a server to the cloud or upgrading to an all-in-one law firm management and growth platform, you can significantly enhance efficiency and client service with modern software.

But all the features within law firm management platforms mean nothing if you find yourself questioning the accuracy of your firm’s data. Christopher Holmes, Chief Operating Officer at Hackett Feinberg P.C., knows this reality all too well.

Modernizing law practice management

In 2020, Chris led the charge to modernize his firm’s operations. A long-time user of Timeslips, Hackett Feinberg was eager to upgrade from an on-premise server to a cloud-based solution.

The firm decided on practice management software that seemed to fit the bill, as it offered the integrated practice management documents, email, and accounting capabilities Chris and his team wanted.

“The goal in moving to that system was to have a modern platform that would better serve our clients, be user friendly, and improve our firm’s efficiency,” he says.

When your legal software’s data integrity fails

After three years with the software, Hackett Feinberg learned its limitations. Primarily, the firm encountered data integrity issues in its accounting, where a deposit would have a date different from other deposits made the same day, throwing off the firm’s bank records.

In other instances, the system showed that clients’ payments were due, even though they had been paid.

“These issues were alarming, and they made us wonder what we might be missing,” Chris says.

The firm recognized other limitations, too, namely a lack of robust, customizable, user-friendly reporting.

“The reporting dashboards were not useful,” Chris says. “They were templates that couldn’t be customized, weren’t based on user roles, and they didn’t have proper user-based restrictions.”

Converting to Centerbase’s law practice management platform

Eventually, it was time to explore other options.

“I got a demo of Centerbase and saw the difference immediately,” Chris says.

Centerbase’s advanced reporting and customizability now give Chris the information he needs.

“I love that I can customize our dashboards by user roles, so we can have a managing partner dashboard, a new associate dashboard, etc., with information that’s relevant to them, and they can do what they need to,” he explains.

He especially appreciates not having to enter data and calculate compensation manually, thanks to Centerbase’s Production and Origination report. “I can let attorneys know their compensation on a daily basis if I need to,” Chris says.

Prioritizing data integrity during implementation

Chris particularly appreciated Centerbase’s focus on data integrity during the onboarding and implementation process.

Centerbase has been in communication with us during the entire data conversion process, working with us to overcome the limitations of the data available from our prior software.

Christopher Holmes, COO, Hackett Feinberg

Centerbase’s proprietary implementation methods deliver accurate data imports by mapping and validating the firm’s data, ensuring it is accurate, organized, configured to fit the firm’s needs, and ready to use on day one.

Chris also likes that his team has an organized implementation process to follow with clear expectations, accountability, and target dates for completing tasks. Additionally, thorough live and online training give them the support they need.

“I’ve been part of software conversions before with larger law firms, and Centerbase’s implementation process brings back those previous positive experiences. The Centerbase team has been great and very helpful. They are magicians,” Chris says.

The usage of artificial intelligence has entered the legal field, and it will change the way attorneys and law firms operate for good. Now is the time to create a roadmap for adopting AI to make sure your firm is ready. Integrating this leading-edge technology can create benefits for your firm and clients, and you’ll need strategic planning to do it right. Check out this roadmap to get started. 

Educate your team on AI  

The more educated you and your firm are about AI and its implications within the legal market, the more likely you are to maximize AI’s possibilities while minimizing its risks. Seek educational opportunities to help your entire staff understand the foundations of using AI within law firms, including use cases, benefits, and ethical considerations.  

1. Attend CLE and other educational opportunities

Many vendors and associations are beginning to provide education and guidance on AI for law firms. Begin attending events through your Bar Associations, practice area groups, technology vendors, and Association of Legal Administrators. You could also invite outside subject matter experts to train your team on AI usage. 

2. Try AI products

“Rent” AI products now using SaaS pricing models to begin testing how AI could provide a competitive advantage for your law firm and staff. Many products include free trials or low-cost, short-term subscription options to get started with.  

For each product you test, have trial users fill out a rubric to help evaluate the product’s effectiveness for your firm. The rubric can document things like the product’s use cases, accuracy and performance, robustness and limitations, regulatory and ethical considerations, security, user experience, and cost.

3. Read up

Even though AI usage in the legal field is just beginning, many resources exist to help you understand the full landscape of AI. For example, the American Bar Association’s Law Technology Today often covers topics related to AI, machine learning, and automation in law practice.  

Of course, a quick Google search will produce a multitude of resources, including white papers on AI in the legal market, checklists to implement AI at your firm, and even sample AI policies to help your firm document its AI approach. 

Evaluate your firm’s technology 

To integrate AI technology effectively, your existing technology needs to be ready for it, too. That means you will need a solid technology infrastructure in place to ensure successful integration and operation of AI products when you’re ready to implement them. Consider these recommendations to get started. 

1. Move your core systems of record to cloud-based technology

Ensure your firm uses modernized cloud-based technology that supports continued enhancements and updates. By having your client data, research data, and documents in modern platforms, you increase your firm’s ability to quickly access this information within AI platforms. 

2. Research your vendors 

Speak with your current vendors to understand their AI roadmap and AI usage within their platform. Ensure you understand the underlying technology the vendor plans to use and that it aligns with your firm’s policy on AI usage.   

3. Consider API access

Understand the API access available in your current software. APIs allow you to integrate your products and data with software and could speed up the transition to using AI within your law firm. 

Form an AI committee within your firm 

Evaluating AI’s fit within your firm could be a significant undertaking, so be prepared to dedicate some resources to it. You will recoup costs incurred during this research and evaluation phase by avoiding surprises and setbacks with a well-prepared AI integration plan. 

While you might need one point of contact to organize the effort, forming an AI task force within your firm allows multiple stakeholders to weigh in, ensures diverse perspectives and user groups are considered, and helps your firm prioritize AI and other emerging technologies.  

This task force can begin identifying specific AI use cases within the firm, such as document review, contract analysis, legal research, or client communication. Prioritizing the use cases where AI technology can provide the most significant value will allow the committee to begin architecting your future technology stack to support them.  

The committee should also be responsible for drafting policies and guidance on how your staff can use AI. This helps ensure your firm factors in compliance and ethical considerations when making decisions about using AI. 

Synthesize your research and prioritize next steps 

It’s time to move from research and analysis to implementation. Synthesize information from each roadmap component above to determine your next steps. How you prioritize what AI solutions to implement will depend on your firm’s unique set of users, client needs, existing technology infrastructure, budget, and many other factors. 

Communication will be critical throughout your firm’s AI journey. Remember to update stakeholders frequently, hold training sessions to upskill your staff on AI technology and its implications for their roles, and continually monitor how AI is working for your firm and clients. 

Following these general guidelines will help you begin your AI journey. For more information on integrating AI in your law practice, check out these resources: 

Basic reporting functionality isn’t enough to help law firms unlock the full potential of their data. Today’s law firms need robust reporting tools that help law firm leaders extract actionable insights, optimize resource allocation, and enhance overall performance. And they need tools that align with their strategic priorities and operational requirements.

Six reporting capabilities can optimize your firm’s efficiency, profitability, and strategic decision-making.

1. Target new opportunities for profit

Typically, law firm reporting software allows users to generate reports to track billable hours, expenses, and invoices. Standard reports may include details such as client billing summaries, unbilled time and expenses, and aging invoice analysis. But these basic reports aren’t enough to help law firms stay competitive in a crowded market.

Law firms need deeper insights. Only a handful of legal software solutions offer profitability reporting, and it’s a game-changer for firms. By analyzing profitability metrics at the timekeeper, practice area, location, and matter levels, law firms can pinpoint areas of strength and weakness, allocate resources effectively, and optimize performance. Prioritizing profitability reporting enables firms to focus on revenue-generating activities and enhance their overall financial health.

2. Visualize data to match the way you work

Law firm reporting software usually includes basic elements such as charts, graphs, and tables that present data in a visual format. These tools give users a snapshot of metrics and trends, helping them make more informed decisions.

But leading reporting platforms allow users to visualize information in multiple ways, with customizable dashboards that allow users to transform raw data into actionable insights. Interactive dashboards offer dynamic visualizations of key performance indicators. Top platforms empower users to create personalized dashboards so they can monitor real-time data, track trends, and gain actionable insights at a glance. The interactive nature of top platforms’ dashboards allows users to drill down into the data for deeper analysis and exploration.

3. Drill down into data with out-of-the-box templates

Not all legal practice management software is created equal. Most tools provide standard reports to understand law firms’ financial metrics, but the top reporting platforms offer robust pre-built report templates out of the box. This advanced reporting functionality allows law firms to drill down into their data immediately and get faster insights compared to standard reports. They can be more cost effective, too, by avoiding paying for customized reports to be created.

Some advanced platforms also include cutting-edge data analytics and predictive modeling capabilities to help law firms identify trends, anticipate future outcomes, and make data-driven decisions.

4. Configure reports to fit your practice's needs

Leading practice management systems include advanced reporting capabilities and unlimited custom data fields, so firms can tailor reports to their specific practice areas, clients, and operational requirements.

With these advanced legal reporting tools, users can create custom data fields, filters, and calculations to generate highly specialized reports that reflect the firm’s specific practice areas, workflows, and metrics. By configuring reporting tools to fit their unique needs, firms can enhance data accuracy, streamline processes, and derive actionable insights.

5. Strengthen internal security with robust reporting permissions

Top legal software also provides granular, role-based permissions so administrators can control access to sensitive data and reports. These platforms allow administrators to define user roles and permissions, ensuring that only authorized individuals have access to specific reports and data sets. This feature enhances data security and compliance with privacy regulations and ethical responsibilities.

6. Share reports easily with quick exporting and importing

Law firms often need to share reports with clients, stakeholders, and regulatory bodies, necessitating seamless export capabilities. However, in some legal software, it can be cumbersome to collect and share the data in a format that others can read.

Leading practice management software allows users to schedule automated report generation and distribution at predefined intervals with just one click. This feature enables users to receive timely reports via email or other communication channels, ensuring that stakeholders can access up-to-date information without manual intervention.

How to level up your law firm’s reporting capabilities

Advanced reporting capabilities are essential for modern law firms seeking to maximize profitability, drive strategic decision-making, and thrive in today’s competitive legal landscape.

Centerbase goes above and beyond basic legal reporting features, offering a comprehensive reporting library plus advanced customization options, interactive dashboards, profitability reporting, role-based permissions, and much more. Its robust reporting features empower law firms to analyze data, drive attorney performance, and achieve their goals with confidence.

If you’d like to see how Centerbase’s reporting solutions can optimize your bottom line and drive strategic business decisions, see below to get a demo.