Matterflow
Stop the revenue leaks. See the whole firm.
Captured billable hours in the first quarter
Days from work done to invoice issued
Aged debt over 90 days
The problem
The firm was profitable on paper but leaking money everywhere in practice. Time was recorded on paper slips and keyed in days later, so an estimated 12 to 18% of billable time was never captured. Matters had no consistent lifecycle, so work-in-progress sat unbilled for months. Conflicts checks were a partner searching their own memory. The managing partner had no real-time view of what the firm was owed, what was at risk of write-off, or which clients were quietly unprofitable.
In short
An end-to-end matter and billing operations system for a mid-sized commercial and disputes firm. We gave the firm a single spine for the life of a matter, from intake and conflicts through time capture, billing, and collection, built for a firm that could not afford a large-firm system or a dedicated operations team. The emphasis was on recovering revenue already being earned but lost, and on giving the partners a live financial picture. The firm is not named here for confidentiality.
- Captured billable hours up roughly 14% within the first full quarter
- Time from work done to invoice issued cut from 71 days to 22
- Aged debt over 90 days reduced by around 40%
How it was built
- 01Fix intake and conflicts first.A guided client and matter intake flow runs an automated conflicts check against the firm's full client and counterparty history in seconds, replacing a partner's memory with a defensible, auditable record.
- 02Capture time without friction.Timers live inside the tools lawyers already use, and a passive suggestion engine reconstructs likely billable activity from calendar and document activity for the lawyer to confirm, so time is captured when it happens rather than guessed at week's end.
- 03Give matters a lifecycle.Every matter moves through clear stages with work-in-progress ageing alerts and automated prompts to bill once WIP crosses a threshold, so revenue stops sitting unbilled for months.
- 04Bill and collect on rails.Templated billing feeds a collections workflow with automated, politely escalating reminders, turning collection from an awkward afterthought into a system that runs itself.
- 05Put the partners on live numbers.A managing-partner dashboard shows live WIP, realisation, aged debt, and client-level profitability, so the firm is run on real figures rather than a quarterly surprise.
Under the hood
Results
- Captured billable hours rose roughly 14% within the first full quarter, almost entirely from time that was already being worked but never recorded.
- Average time from work done to invoice issued fell from 71 days to 22, and aged debt over 90 days dropped around 40%.
- Conflicts now run in seconds with a defensible audit trail, reducing professional-liability exposure.
- For a firm billing around 6 million a year, the lift in captured time plus faster collection translated to well over 700,000 in additional realised revenue in year one, at almost no added cost to serve.
Questions
