Law Practice Management Asked and Answered Blog

Category: Personal Injury Law Firm Key Metrics and Dashboards

Nov 05, 2013

Law Firm Personal Injury Firm – Key Metrics and Dashboards

Question:

I am the managing partner of a 6 attorney personal injury plaintiff firm in San DIego. We are a high volume/small case firm that depends heavily on advertising. We have 1200 open files and are currently are spending 17% of our revenue on advertising. While our case management system provides us with numerous reports – what are key reports that we should be using?

Response:

Many of the billing and case management systems do a poor job of providing key metrics and dashboards that can be used to manage and control actual operations going forward. In a firm such as yours it is critical that you actively manage your inventory of cases, your pipeline, manage workflow, and insure that you are obtaining adequate return on your marketing investment. Here are a few thoughts:

  1. Think about what you need to know to manage your operations.
  2. What summary metrics (10 or less) should be on your dashboard and will serve as indicators as to whether you are on course?
  3. Use a spreadsheet to develop a dashboard report of these key metrics that are extracted from your accounting and case management systems. Include charts and graphs.
  4. Assign someone the responsibility for preparing the report on at least a monthly basis on the same day of the month.
  5. Use the report as control tool, investigate problem areas, and take corrective action in real time.

Click here for sample dashboard

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John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

 

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