Digital White Papers

I L T A S U R V E Y R E S U L T S | L I T I G A T I O N A N D P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T 5 done – that is a key factor in the write down/off of time. Clear billing entry descriptions can certainly be helpful – but non-attorney time is generally the first to go. Understanding and working with the details in the business of litigation support is a key function in our profession - where we are privy to the information about them, we can work to communicate or educate the attorneys about the impact of our work. Often, the evaluation of non-attorneys is based on billed time rather than the time being billed to clients - that is helpful to best understand our performance, but it is not the entire story. Where we are involved in the communications about litigation support billing, client objections topped at overall costs and the specific tasks that are billed. In order to understand the true profitability of litigation and practice support services, realization is the indicator of how profitable any position in a law firm is performing. It is the final business computation that proves the commercial success of a department or person. It is the magic number calculated by taking the amount of money, billed out or paid by clients, divided by the amount of time this is billed. I have never worked at a firm where this information was visible to anyone outside of firm leadership, so I do not know if it was routinely calculated and/or with whome the information was shared. As this information is similar to an income statement, with overhead, expenses balanced against incoming funds - it can be a battle of wills for those outside of the financial / firm leadership to obtain it. The result of this can be an infinity loop where the ultimate profitability of a department or person, is tied to unknown and unrelated data points (e.g. what / why was time reduced, if any, and then if the client identified specific work they were going to pay for). Perhaps that is the issue – we have many points of failure in the profitability of our time or services. Regardless of if and how leadership uses that information, this number is often deemed confidential even though it holds so much value as a management tool. As we specialize in the business of discovery management, this one number holds the key data points for continuous process improvement, staffing decisions, return on investment for technology and personnel, and the overall success of support offerings. The impact of this information is becoming more relevant as litigation support morphs from a time-for-services I L T A ' S 2 0 2 2 L I T I G A T I O N & P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T S U R V E Y R E S U L T S

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