§ Tool · Matter profitability

Matter profitability Calculator.

Put in one matter — or one matter type — and see whether it's actually making money once you factor in real hours, write-offs, and disbursements.

→Kill loss-making matter types before they scale
→Price fixed-fee work with actual data
→Compare effective hourly rates across practice areas

Inputs

Fees charged (or fixed-fee quoted)£

Actual hours spent on the matterhours

Include all fee earners and supporting staff.

Blended hourly cost of time£/hr

Salary + overhead ÷ billable hrs. Not your hourly rate.

Disbursements and external costs£

Write-offs on this matter£

Result

Profit

£1,230

Margin

29.3%

Effective hourly rate

Net fees divided by total hours — what you actually earned per hour on this matter.

£131/hr

Total cost of the matter

Labour + disbursements + write-offs.

£3,270

Benchmark: healthy small-firm matter margins sit around 25–40% after fully loaded costs. Matters consistently below 15% margin are usually a pricing problem or a scoping problem — run the calc across a few of the same type to see which.

Save your result

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Matter margin by type (benchmarks)→Fixed fees vs hourly — what works where→Billing leakage calculator→

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We also run Techsperience (legal-tech support) and Clearmatter (matter management). Mostly we write. Learn more →