Personal Injury lawyers spend their days juggling everything from managing team activities to conducting client meetings to staying on top of critical deadlines. Finding the time to analyze in between the daily tasks and caseload is a challenge. The old-school approach is no longer sufficient. There’s not enough insight. Studies show failing to adapt to technological advances can slow down and limit growth.
Fortunately, CloudLex legal practice dashboards can help solve both the time and approach challenges firms face. Legal KPI dashboards provide day-to-day activity management needs by reporting matter-centric, practice-related macro, and micro-level data. This type of law firm reporting is essential to success and can take your legal practice to the next level.
Importance of law firm performance review
If you don’t take the time to examine your law office’s performance, you’ll never know if there’s room for improvement. All businesses need to be assessed regularly to continue to excel and increase profits. Law firms are no exception. Law firms must conduct ongoing and consistent assessments. Regular law firm reporting can help you identify the things you’re doing that work and things you’re doing that don’t work.
We’ll discuss eight reports your firm should run to measure how it’s performing so you can maximize your profits—these KPIs focus on tracking the entire efficiency of the firm, not just the monetary elements.
1. Matter tracking law firm report
Clients are the most valuable assets. Matter tracking and reporting software is designed to deliver client satisfaction by providing you insight into their needs. In matter tracking, legal matters and related data are gathered, tracked, and reported throughout the matter lifecycle. Matter tracking software lets you see the time it takes to move a case from client intake to discovery to settlement, etc. Tracking the time makes for efficient matter management. If the time span seems unreasonable, there may be an inefficiency in the process you’ll want to reevaluate. The information in this report will alert you of a problem that you can quickly identify and resolve.
2. New and closed matters per month
New and closed matter reporting tracks how many new clients your firm is bringing in and the number of matters closed. If the numbers change drastically, maybe there was some changing variable.
New and closed matter reports will reveal the case life cycles. This will give you insight into the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your firm’s processes. You’ll see how many new cases you receive in a month versus how many are closed. You will also learn the amount of time spent on matters from intake to final communication with the client. If the time span seems unreasonable, there may be an inefficiency in the process you’ll want to reevaluate.
3. Expense management for law firms – monthly expense report
Profits can’t be accurately gauged without reviewing how much money goes out each month. Expenses reports show you every cent that leaves your law firm’s account. You can use this information to determine areas where you can trim costs. Explore more affordable vendors or look for modern money-saving approaches, such as paperless files.
4. Personal injury settlement report
Settlement reporting helps your firm track settlement activity, including outstanding amounts, total paid amounts, demand, and offers. Reporting software also tracks and monitors closing dates to help the team stay on track. This key report shows your firm’s earnings and personal injury settlement calculator activities across all cases.
5. Law firm annual reports – matter valuation
The matter valuation reports tell you how much revenue was generated from specific matters. They help identify the most profitable cases for your firm. These reports tell you how much time a case takes, with this information, you can position your firm to take on more of the most profitable types of cases.
6. Law firm calendaring – event report
It may come as no surprise that many law firms, from solos to national personal injury firms, are concerned about handling their legal calendar and critical deadlines. This type of record empowers lawyers to spend more time on client work and less time on the administrative stuff.
Event Report should give you firm-wide events due vs. completed reports so you know where to allocate more resources. Insight into matter-specific events allows you to track the progress of the matter and plan your strategy. Event reports provide due dates, status, event type, event locations, owners, and other key details at a glance. As a Managing Partner, you’ll know exactly what’s happening in matters across your firm.
7. Stalled matters and matter age report
These KPIs help ensure that the matter is constantly moving and not forgotten. The reports help you in matter management and identify cases that have stalled and need attention. If there’s no movement within 90 days, you may have hit a wall and need to address it. The matter age reports reveal how long a case has been open and active. Use the information in these reports to allocate resources as needed to keep the cases alive and clients satisfied.
8. Task report
Task reports are snapshots of the firm’s affairs. Task history reports record each task’s history and allow you to view changes, including what changes were applied and when. This is a helpful way to analyze the workflow and legal task management.
Conclusion
Analyzing your firm’s KPIs allows you to make decisions based on data. Running those eight key reports enables you to monitor the performance of pivotal aspects that will turbo-charge your law firm.
