Eclipse Legal Systems: The importance of analysing data in a law firm
A law firm isn’t necessarily the type of organisation you would expect needs to focus so much on data and analytics. They take on cases for individuals and businesses, try to reach the best conclusion possible for their clients, and then move on to the next case.
But the underlying statistics create a clear picture of how the entire operation is running, and a thorough analysis can enable firms to improve efficiencies and performance. Taking the time to look at the data, including information on cases, fee earners and accounts, is well worthwhile.
This is what the best law firms are doing today. If you’re not – then you’re being left behind.
Analysing case data
If you want to maximise your output, in terms of completed cases, then it’s important to ensure you’re working near to full capacity as much as possible. Keep your fee earners busy and as soon as a space opens up in their workload, ensure it gets filled with more billable hours.
To do this, you should constantly be reviewing data on how many cases are currently open, which cases have recently closed, and what capacity your fee earners are currently working at. This way you always know where there are gaps that can be filled with new business.
Analysing employee performance
The type of data mentioned above is also incredibly useful when looking at the performance of your fee earners. For example, if they have targets for the number of cases they need to complete in any given time frame, this information will show who is on track, and who isn’t.
Good analytics software will also enable users to breakdown not just the number of cases each fee earner is currently working on, but the value of those cases, so you can easily see which individuals are generating the most revenue for your firm – and which could be doing better.
Analysing financial data
Speaking of revenue, the ability to really drill down into financial analytics is incredibly important from a business perspective. The ability to see the value of each case can provide amazing insights into what sort of clients you should be looking to take on, in order to maximise revenues.
Of course, looking into financial data is already done by law firms – accounting staff need to know what money is coming in and where money is going out. But to specifically attribute those figures to particular clients allows you to see which clients are especially profitable for the firm, and seeing which fee earners are bringing in the most money is useful information to have.
Proclaim BI
With Proclaim BI law firms can easily analyse business efficiency and avoid being left behind by the competition.
Proclaim BI is the new dashboard designed to help law firms know their data and enable them to make more informed business decisions, allowing users to clearly visualise their key business information and access data insight and graphical analysis in real time.
