Memo
To: Law Firm Partners
From: Nermin, Esq.
Date: April 7, 2026
Re: Keeping the emotions out of it
If you’re a partner or a shareholder or in any management position in your law firm, the expectation is that you will make decisions for the firm without emotions. Yet, I find that most partners during their partnership meetings will decide things by defaulting to emotions because they haven’t created a culture based on numbers.
Before you roll your eyes, and say “I became a lawyer because I can’t do numbers,” let’s leave that fear/emotion here and answer these questions:
- When your firm decided its rates for this year, did you do a market analysis that shows that other firms are charging? Did you do any business modeling to see what the revenue and profits would be at different rates? (After 10 years working with law firms, I can almost guarantee this is a no).
- Has your law firm does capacity projections to see when you need to hire? Or do you hire because the Partner says “I’m slammed.”
- Does your law firm have billable projections for your clients based on previous years billables?
Without numbers, even lawyers and partners who are supposed to be evidence based experts, will end up defaulting to making decisions based on feelings.
“I feel like we shouldn’t raise our rates this year.”
“We feel that this department is going to be busy and we want to be prepared, so we’re going to hire 3 new associates.”
“We did $12 million last year, and we feel we can do the same.”
Each time I ask my clients these questions, inevitably, this is their answer. And there’s a difference between making that decision on feelings versus numbers.
Example 1: Numbers based decision for the firm’s revenue
I go through and I analyze what 2026 billables will be based on 2025 data from your case manager (Clio, etc). From there, we see where we firm’s revenue currently stands and what the gap is between the revenue goal and billable projections.
In the example below, if the firm’s projections are at $3 million, but they have a goal of $5 million, this is no longer a wish. It becomes a plan – here’s where the firm expects $3 million from and it will be measured each month to make sure the Firm is on track. Then, we create a strategy on where the remaining $2 million will come from. Not feelings, all tracked by numbers. This makes hitting the $5 million target inevitable, not a hope or a wish.
Example 2. Partner’s don’t want to raise fees
The Partners feel that based on the economy, they don’t want to raise fees this year. Further, they believe that their rates are appropriate for the market.
I do an analysis on the current rate, the market rate, and the proposed rate increase, showing clearly how much money is left on the table when not raising rates.
That feelings based decision now becomes a partner conversation of “do we want to leave $200k on the table for Harbor Chemical? What if we raised rates by 10%, then we could at least get some of that revenue that we are below market on?”
The best law firms I work with (and this includes the ones who are ex-Big Law) make decisions based on numbers. Not feelings or market fear.
And the best part about making decisions based on numbers is that no one is the “bad guy.” None of the partners are “at fault” because it’s about the numbers and what the numbers are saying. If anything, the numbers are to blame.
If your firm is pointing fingers at the partners, not making decisions or making the wrong decisions based on feelings, and not the numbers,” let’s you and I talk: nermin@nerminesq.com.
