Everything, filed.
77 pieces across four shelves and nine hats. Filter by shelf, hat, topic, or priority.
Direction, deliberate choices, priorities, and what the firm will decline.
Setting firm direction without a strategy day→
Three questions, a 90-day cycle, and the metrics that signal whether direction is actually moving.
When to decline a matterSign up to read →
Six traits of the matters small firms most regret taking, a decline test for intake, and how to say no within a day.
Understanding how the firm makes, loses, and leaks money.
How to reduce billing leakage→
The four places firms quietly lose fees — and what to do about each, in order.
Billing leakage trackerSign up to read →
Drop in your WIP, unbilled and write-off data — get a monthly leakage view.
Realisation and collection benchmarksSign up to read →
Three places fees disappear — recorded → billed → collected. Realistic ranges by matter type.
Fixing realisation without fighting clientsSign up to read →
Where realisation really drops and the practical moves that lift it five points.
Raising utilisation in 90 days→
Measure what's real, fix the worst leaks, protect billable time — without asking people to work more.
Utilisation trackerSign up to read →
Week-by-week utilisation by fee earner, with target vs actual and WIP added.
Utilisation benchmarksSign up to read →
Annualised billable hours per FE by role, plus the three definitions of utilisation %.
Monthly matter profitability reviewSign up to read →
The 45-minute meeting that kills loss-making matter types before they scale.
Matter profitability sheetSign up to read →
Per-matter view of fees, costs, write-offs, effective hourly rate, margin. Surfaces under-priced types.
Matter margin by typeSign up to read →
Realistic profit margins by matter type, sector, and fee structure.
Performance, behaviour, wellbeing, development, supervision, and exits.
Getting workload visibility in two weeks→
Stop guessing who's busy. A simple weekly load view that partners and managers actually read.
Headcount ratios at small firmsSign up to read →
Three ratios — leverage, paralegals per FE, support per FE — by practice area and firm size, with the patterns to watch.
Better delegation to paralegals and supportSign up to read →
The work that should move down, the conversations that make it stick.
Billable hours per fee earnerSign up to read →
Median and top-quartile billable hours per fee earner per year, by role.
Making the next-hire decision with evidenceSign up to read →
How to know whether you need another lawyer, a paralegal, or a practice manager — and in what order.
Hire another lawyer or another paralegal?→
The signals that point to each — and the honest break-even calculation.
When to hire a practice managerSign up to read →
Firm size, signals, and what the role should actually do.
Practice manager job descriptionSign up to read →
Scope, outcomes, and the hard-skills list.
The behaviours the firm repeatedly permits and therefore teaches others to copy.
Measuring your firm's culture without guessing→
Five ways to measure what the culture actually is — a competing values survey, the Toleration Test, an exceptions log, numbers you already hold, and scheduled conversations.
Culture survey — now vs preferredSign up to read →
A competing values survey for the whole firm: where people think the culture is, where they want it, and the gap between partners and everyone else.
Workflows, handoffs, waiting points, process consistency, and operating design.
Get matter visibility in 30 daysSign up to read →
From 'I don't know where the work is' to a live view of every open matter, owner, and status.
Running a weekly matter reviewSign up to read →
The half-hour meeting that catches dropped matters and renegotiates priorities.
Building a simple matter management systemSign up to read →
Without buying software. Status, owner, milestones, and a working review cadence.
Matter audit sheetSign up to read →
Not a replacement for PM software — a diagnostic. Pull every active matter into one sheet to surface what your tool isn't showing, run the weekly review, or bridge the smallest firms before they buy software.
Matter duration benchmarksSign up to read →
Median and upper quartile for common matter types — and the three places duration usually leaks.
Matter closure disciplineSign up to read →
How to make sure closed matters actually close — fees collected, files archived, CRM updated.
Matter status taxonomySign up to read →
The six statuses you actually need. No more, no less.
Matter closure checklistSign up to read →
What to do before a matter leaves the active pipeline.
Active matters per fee earnerSign up to read →
Healthy workload vs. overflow, by seniority and practice area.
Killing the three biggest admin drains→
Where fee-earner time really goes — and the sequence to reclaim it that doesn't require new software.
Standardising the five most repeated jobsSign up to read →
The week-long exercise that turns ad-hoc work into documented, delegable steps.
SOP templateSign up to read →
Eight-section, two-page format. Objective, trigger, steps, owner, handoff, exception, instrumentation.
Admin vs fee-earner timeSign up to read →
How much of a fee-earner's day goes to non-billable admin at small firms.
The behavioural and process change surrounding technology, not merely procurement.
Auditing your current firm stack→
What's in use, what it costs, who actually uses it, and what to cut first.
Do you need matter management software?→
A buy-vs-build decision framework for firms weighing dedicated software against a sharper process.
Improve process or buy software?Sign up to read →
The order matters. Sharpen the process first, then let the tool make it faster.
When spreadsheets stop workingSign up to read →
The specific signals that say you've outgrown your sheet — and what to move first.
Picking software without getting soldSign up to read →
A sober evaluation process for practice management, accounts, and document tools.
Running a legal software POC in your firmSign up to read →
Scoping, success criteria, and the meeting that ends it one way or the other.
Best-of-breed vs all-in-one practice systemSign up to read →
Where bundled wins, where bundled quietly costs more than point tools.
Software POC scorecardSign up to read →
One-page framework for calling a POC won or lost.
Stack audit + renewal trackerSign up to read →
Tool, owner, cost, renewal, seats used vs seats bought.
Tech spend per fee earnerSign up to read →
What small firms actually spend on software per fee earner per year.
The consistency, clarity, responsiveness, and confidence experienced by clients.
The living connection between formal policy and actual behaviour under pressure.
Compliance as an operating system→
The SRA tells you what compliance is. This piece is the operating model around it — named owners, monthly cadence, evidence trail, calendar. Two hours a month for the COLP/COFA.
An escalation route people actually useSign up to read →
One door, a response time, a near-miss log, and a way round the partner — plus a fire drill to test whether your route works.
Where the next client comes from — marketing, referrals, enquiries, and proposals.
How to fix client intake in 10 days→
Ten-day rollout from missed enquiries to a reliable intake pipeline, using tools you already own.
Building a single inbox for every new enquirySign up to read →
Phone, email, website, referrals — one place, one tracker, one owner.
Qualifying enquiries without wasting partner timeSign up to read →
A 4-question qualification script your reception or paralegal can run in 90 seconds.
Who should own client intake?Sign up to read →
Reception, paralegal, lawyer, or practice manager — the right answer at different firm sizes.
Client intake formSign up to read →
Ready-to-use web form and spreadsheet — captures the fields that actually matter.
Enquiry trackerSign up to read →
One row per enquiry, every channel, every outcome. Source, status, owner, response time, conversion outcome.
Enquiry-to-retained conversion ratesSign up to read →
Realistic ranges by practice area. Where conversion usually leaks. Conversion by source.
Running a missed-enquiry auditSign up to read →
How much work are you losing between first contact and engagement? Find out in an afternoon.
Monthly intake and conversion reviewSign up to read →
A 30-minute cadence that turns intake from a black box into a managed pipeline.
Online form vs phone-first intakeSign up to read →
When web-first capture wins, when it loses clients, and how to do both.
Intake qualification scriptSign up to read →
The four-question script reception or paralegal can run in 90 seconds. Field-tested.
Enquiry response time benchmarksSign up to read →
How quickly firms that convert well actually respond to new enquiries.