Blog · Board and management reporting · Law firms
How a law firm measures realisation per client from time entries and bills: billed value over worked value at standard rates, the write-downs and write-offs behind the gap, the trend per client and per partner, and the clients whose effective discount has widened year on year through a hundred small decisions that nobody made as a policy.
A managing partner sees firm realisation at 84 percent and a partner sees a matter they wrote down last week. Neither sees the client whose realisation has fallen ten points a year for three years across every matter and every partner who touched it. The time entries and the bills, joined per client, show it. This guide sets out realisation per client, the split between write-down and write-off, and the drift list.
Per client, per year:
Worked value = Σ hours × standard rate at the time Billed value = Σ bills Collected value = Σ receipts Billing realisation = billed ÷ worked Collection realisation = collected ÷ billed Effective discount = 1 − collected ÷ worked
Per partner: the same across their clients.
Client and fee earner identifiers only.
Σ clients' billed value = billed fees in the ledger, per period
A bill with no matter or a matter with no client fails it and is listed.
| Client | Worked | Billed | Collected | Billing realisation | Three years ago | Agreed discount | Leakage vs agreement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2207 | $1.9m | $1.46m | $1.41m | 77% | 92% | 8% | $290,000 |
| 4471 | $1.2m | $0.84m | $0.84m | 70% | 71% | 30% | none |
| 9034 | $640,000 | $600,000 | $520,000 | 94% | 95% | 5% | $80,000 collection |
Client 2207 has an agreed discount of eight percent and an effective discount of twenty-six, and the difference has grown every year. Nobody decided it; four partners each wrote down their own matters. Client 4471 is at seventy percent because that is the agreement. Client 9034 bills well and collects badly, which is a different conversation.
| Partner | Worked | Billing realisation | Write-down share | Clients drifting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P-014 | $3.1m | 88% | 12% | 1 |
| P-031 | $2.7m | 74% | 26% | 6 |
Partner P-031 writes down a quarter of what their team works. Six of their clients are on the drift list. That is a scoping or a pricing conversation, with the clients named.
Firm-level only. Eighty-four percent and no list.
Write-down and write-off blended. Scoping problems and collection problems get the same fix.
Agreements not carried. Every discounted client looks like drift. Carry the agreement; report leakage against it.
Matter-level lists. Forty small write-downs on one client, each too small to notice.
Mapped once, time entries, bills, receipts and the agreements produce realisation, its split, the trend and the drift list every quarter. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The law firms page describes the setup, and the referral share guide covers the other per-partner measure from the same matter data.
A write-down reduces the bill before it is sent: time worked that the partner chose not to charge. A write-off reduces what is collected after billing: an amount the client disputed or did not pay. Both reduce realisation and they have different causes, so they are reported separately.
No. A fixed-fee matter that ran over is low realisation by design, and a strategic client on an agreed discount is a decision. The finding is realisation that fell without an agreement changing, which the trend per client shows and the rate agreement file confirms.
A matter is one event. A client is a pattern. A client at 70 percent across forty matters over three years, down from 92, is a pricing relationship that drifted, and it is worth more to fix than any single matter.