Asked and Answered
By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
Q. I am the managing partner of a three attorney personal injury plaintiff firm in Indianapolis. We have a total of 600+ open PI files. What are some of the key financial metrics/indicators that we should be using to manage the practice?
A. From your case count it is obvious that you a managing a high volume practice. In addition to selecting the right cases, managing your inventory (case portfolio) is crucial as is managing and monitoring the effectiveness of your marketing investments. Here are a few metrics that you might consider incorporating into a one page report with trend line charts. You can design the report in Excel and pull the numbers from detail reports from your case management system:
Plotted by Month
- Fees Collected by Case Type
- Number of New Client Appointments Made
- Number of New Client Appointments Kept
- Number of New Cases Conditionally Signed
- Number of New Cases Accepted/Opened
- Number of Later Case Dumps
- Ratio of New Cases to Dumps
- Number of Demands
- Number of Files Closed
- Number of Open Cases - by Case Type
- Total Open Cases
- Number of Open Cases Per Lawyer
- Average Age of Open Cases (Turnover)
- Expected Fees - Value of Case Inventory by Case Type (Expected Value)
- Total Expected Fees - Value of Total Case Inventory/Pipeline
- Average Case Fee
- Marketing/Referral Source - No of cases opened each month by referral source.
This will get you started.