Difference Maker: Utilization Rate Separates Growing Law Firms from Shrinking Ones
The 2019 Clio Legal Trends Report (download link here ) , which is a longitudinal study of law firm data across a variety of categories, including internal efficiencies and external relationships with clients. It’s a fascinating read every year; and, that includes 2019. The 2019 study focused on what the functional difference between growing firms (law firms that grew revenue by over 100% across a 5-year period) and shrinking firms (law firms that lost over 50% of their revenue over a 5-year period) was. Perhaps surprisingly, the driver for revenue growth was not what you might expect. It wasn’t pricing. And, it wasn’t marketing spend. It wasn’t attorney experience. And, it wasn’t total case intake. It was utilization rate. If you’re not familiar with utilization rate, it represents amount of total hours you could bill in a day versus what you actually bill . For example...