The Problem
Our customer, a law firm, struggled to understand revenue and profitability at the practice-area level because their Aderant financial system offered only static, siloed reporting. Partners lacked a reliable way to view the financial performance of their individual practices without manual consolidation. The marketing team also had limited visibility into client-sector performance, making targeted campaign planning difficult. Operational decisions were slowed by inconsistent data definitions and outdated extracts. Overall, the firm needed a unified, analytics-ready view of its financial data with self-service access for both leadership and business teams.
The Solution
DSI integrated the firm’s Aderant data into the Microsoft cloud analytics stack, building a structured and governed model that standardized revenue, cost, and profitability calculations. The pipeline automated ingestion from Aderant, applied business-approved logic for allocations, and enforced consistent dimensions for practice areas, time periods, and customer sectors. This eliminated the need for manual reporting work and ensured a single version of the financial truth.
On top of the model, we delivered interactive reports and dashboards that allowed partners to drill into their practice performance in real time. They could see revenue drivers, cost contributors, and margin trends without relying on finance to assemble extracts. Variances were tracked automatically, making both monthly reviews and long-range planning more straightforward.
For the marketing team, we exposed customer-sector analytics that connected sector definitions, client types, and billed activity. This helped them identify which sectors were growing, which were declining, and where campaign efforts would produce the greatest return. By centralizing these insights on the Microsoft platform, the firm gained a durable analytics foundation that supports ongoing operational and strategic decision-making.
Future phases of the deployment will enable the following analyses:
Profitability and pricing
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Matter and client profitability (fully loaded margin by client, matter, practice area, office, partner, fee type, phase/task code).
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Pricing and fee modeling: compare realization under different rate structures (rack rate vs agreed rate, AFAs, caps, volume discounts) and review write‑offs/write‑downs by client and matter.
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Cost‑to‑serve: blend time/expense data with overhead allocations to see the true cost of delivering specific types of work (e.g., fixed‑fee litigation, M&A deals) and use that as a benchmark when scoping new matters.
Revenue, WIP, AR, and cash
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WIP and lock‑up dashboards: ageing of WIP and AR by partner, client, practice, office; time from work performed to bill, and bill to cash.
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Revenue analytics: billed, collected, and net revenue by period with drill‑downs to timekeeper and matter, including effective rate, realization (billing and collection), and discounting patterns.
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Cash‑flow and collections: DSO, promise‑to‑pay tracking, collection effectiveness by collector or partner, and identification of at‑risk receivables.
Timekeeper productivity and resourcing
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Timekeeper and team performance: hours worked vs billable vs billed vs collected; utilization, leverage, and recovery by role (partner, associate, clerk, paralegal).
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Behavioral analysis: late time entry, missing time, non‑billable patterns, and compliance with firm time entry policies (augmented by Aderant’s time policy tools like Thrive).
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Capacity and staffing: demand vs capacity by practice/office using historic workload patterns to inform hiring, secondments, and staffing models.
Budgeting, forecasting, and planning
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Revenue and expense budgeting at multiple levels (firm, office, practice, timekeeper) with rolling forecasts that replace the budget with actuals as the year progresses.
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Scenario and “what‑if” analysis: simulate changes in rates, utilization, write‑offs, or mix of work to see impact on partner profit, practice margins, and cash.
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Variance analysis: budget vs actual by GL line and by driver metrics (hours, rates, realization) to understand whether variance is volume, price, mix, or collection‑driven.
Client, matter, and portfolio management
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Client portfolio views: concentration risk (top clients by revenue and profit), cross‑sell opportunities, and trends in rate resistance, discounting, and realization by client.
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Matter lifecycle analytics: cycle times from opening to key milestones and to closure, profitability, and scope creep indicators by phase/task, and flagging matters that are off‑track vs budget.
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AFA performance: compare fixed‑fee/contingency/portfolio deals to time‑and‑materials matters, including effective hourly rates and margin stability over time.
