Use Legal Analytics to Improve Law Firm Operations with LEAP Legal Software

Legal professionals often find themselves swamped with hours upon hours of work that can take them and their team well past traditional work hours. Whether it’s filling out documents and forms, meeting with clients, court appearances, or completing manual administrative work, it leaves very little time for partners and attorneys to analyze how well things are working across the firm. Even trying to analyze firm performance becomes extremely difficult when firms run without software or use on-premises software that leaves data gaps in the information it tracks or can generate reports on. However, law firm reporting could be the secret to improving operations.

Especially as we approach the start of a new year, law firms that can analyze performance data can improve operations, caseload management, compliance, and client experience by making real-time adjustments to be better prepared for the busy season ahead. While this might seem daunting, innovative legal technology solutions like LEAP can simplify and automate law firm reporting so that attorneys can run a data-driven practice.

What is Law Firm Reporting?

Law firm reporting is the process of collecting and analyzing data on key performance indicators (KPIs) for your law firm. Insights from these reports can then be used to understand where a firm is performing well and where improvements need to be made to increase productivity, profitability, compliance, and client experiences. While manual reporting can be done, it can often be inaccurate due to data gaps and clerical errors. Law firm reporting software that can track all the functions of law firm staff members to generate reports can streamline reporting and provide more accurate insights in real-time.

Key Legal Metrics Every Law Firm Should Measure

Law firms can track and measure several types of legal analytics.

Law Firm Analytics

Law firm analytics provide a holistic overview of how your business is running. These analytics can include how many active cases are in progress, the number of new inquiries received, the number of unpaid invoices, and any other high-level KPIs that a partner or attorney may want to look at to understand a law firm’s current status.

Matter & Case Analytics

Matter and case analytics drive deeper into individual cases allowing attorneys and their support staff to better understand their workload, upcoming or past due tasks, important dates, and the types of cases currently being worked. While this type of reporting is used to improve productivity in the day-to-day, managing partners can also use these reports to see what areas of law or specific case types a firm is making the most on to double down on marketing efforts for those cases or increase focus on other relevant areas of law or jurisdictions the firm can service.

Vendor Analytics

Vendor analytics can simplify and streamline establishing and maintaining relationships with vendors and help ensure that you work with the most effective and cost-efficient third-party partners. These analytics should allow you to view all vendors based on services, hourly rates or retainer fees, turnaround times, and scoring based on past engagements. Once you start to collect and analyze these data points, you can then market that back to potential and existing clients to showcase your commitment to providing them with the most efficient and cost-effective legal services.

Billing Analytics

Billing analytics are essential to running a sustainable and profitable business. Billing analytics provide insight to invoice status, matter expenses, how much money fee earners are generating, and comparisons of invoiced and receipted funds. Billing reporting ensures that your firm is invoicing accurately and regularly, billing for all expenses that can be recovered from clients, identify top fee earners in the firm, and identify if there are ways to improve how quickly your firm gets paid for the work your staff completes.

Track Key Law Firm Metrics with LEAP Legal Software

While some larger law firms may have a role or department dedicated to legal operations for data analysis, average law firms do not have the resources to have roles dedicated solely to legal analytics. That’s where innovative software like the LEAP legal practice management solution can automate and streamline the reporting process.

LEAP is a fully integrated cloud solution that allows you to automate and streamline every aspect of your firm’s operations, including practice management, document management and assembly, legal publishing, and legal accounting, with remote accessibility through the LEAP Mobile App. This accessibility means that every action is tracked and managed in a single platform. Therefore, law firms can seamlessly start running reports directly in LEAP on the key metrics most relevant to their role and firm.

You can set up reports to automatically run daily, weekly, and monthly for insight-rich reports to be sent to you to make data-based decisions to improve profitability, productivity, and client experiences. Top reports in LEAP include:

• Account Receivable Report,

• Aged WIP Report,

• Potential Trust to Receivables Transfer,

• Daily Time & Fees by Staff,

• Fee Earner Summary,

• and more.

Law firms also have the option to use customized reports to match their needs based on the area of law or any special needs.

Conclusion

Whether a law firm is looking to solve a specific problem or just looking to take its operations to the next level, legal analytics and law firm reporting provide the insights needed to make effective and data-driven decisions. Manual reporting takes too much time that attorneys and their support staff don’t have and often is inaccurate due to data gaps. The LEAP legal practice management solution provides an intuitive and automated solution to track and analyze law firms' operations to run regular and intuitive reports for partners and firm owners to make real-time adjustments to overall operations, caseload and management, compliance, and client experience. Schedule a demo today to see how the LEAP legal reports can help your firm start making data-backed decisions to stay ahead of your competition.