The Three Rates
Recording, realization, and collection — graded against practice-area benchmarks, with the compound effective rate that actually matters.
Most small-firm owners conflate billing and collection — and never compute the compound. By the time you multiply recording × realization × collection, the firm is often operating at half what the owner thinks. The math is direct. No card. No pitch.
We start by asking what kind of practice you run, then ask only for the numbers that fit. Most owners finish in under two minutes.
Three rates, the compound, the dollar leak by category, and a 30 / 60 / 90 day plan to plug it.
Recording, realization, and collection — graded against practice-area benchmarks, with the compound effective rate that actually matters.
A waterfall from recorded → billed → collected, with monthly and annualized leak by category. The annual headline is rarely small.
The dominant leak diagnosed for your specific firm and practice area — what the math is telling us about the root cause.
Lowest-friction wins this month, process changes by month two, structural fixes by month three. Specific enough to assign on a Monday.
A firm with a 70% recording rate, 85% realization rate, and 92% collection rate is operating at 55% effective realization. Most owners would guess 85 to 90 — they don't compound the leaks. Every $100 of work performed is putting $55 in the bank. The output is brutal but mathematically clean and irrefutable.