In today’s unstable market, growing a successful law firm can be challenging. Even though you’re willing to put in the hard work, it’s difficult to keep up with your clients’ rapidly changing needs, maintain a healthy profit margin and ensure the firm is working in the best way possible. And that’s not to mention your limited time to implement change.
To remedy this challenge, firms need to adopt a systematic way of tracking metrics that measure performance and effectiveness. Tracking metrics that are specifically tailored to your objectives can provide you early warnings when important factors are out of range. Metrics can help you identify where you need to invest time and energy into changing so that you can enjoy increased profitability. And, they can help you monitor that your efforts are driving growth.
In short, metrics can give you the focus you need to ensure you dedicate time to what matters most.
Which metrics do we need to track?
While every firm will select metrics that reflect their specific objectives, we’ve compiled a list of the must track metrics for meeting four strategic goals:
- Keeping the business going with a healthy client base
- Increasing profitability
- Reconfiguring your organisation to make the most of the time you have
- Taking control over earnings and getting paid
While this isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list of metrics, it will give you a starting point to start to measure your firm’s efforts in these key areas. It’s also important to keep in mind that no single metric will tell the whole story; rather, a combination of financial, operational and business metrics need to be looked at collectively to make informed decisions.
