Metrics and Dashboards for a Personal Injury Law Firm

Question:

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?

Response:

From your case count it is obvious that you a managing a high volume practice. In addition to selecting the right cases managing you 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.

Income statements/profit and loss statements are nice history lessons but they don't help you manage the productive operations of the firm.

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

Posted at 09:41 PM in Financial Management
Tags: Law firm metrics and dashboards personal injury firm

Jul 16, 2013

Metrics and Dashboards for a Personal Injury Law Firm

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