Memo
To: Law Firm Partners
From: Nermin, Esq.
Date: June 12, 2026
Re: Your book of business
Every partner has spent years working on their book of business, from their first year out of law school until today.
That book of business is a representation of the relationships you have built over time, the hours you have spent following up, and the effort you have put into the long game.
The reality is that your book of business isn’t the same, from one year to the next. If it was $2.5 million of billable time in 2025, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be $2.5 million in 2026 or 2027.
What I find is that most partners will assume that whatever they did in billables last year is guaranteed to happen again this year. When I pressure that assumption (because someone needs to), there’s usually a gap – a gap between what my numbers show you’ll bill and what you’re assuming you’re going to bill.
I call this your billable projections for 2026, and Fortune 500 companies call this “projections.”
Why is this important?
1) As a partner, wouldn’t you want to know in January that your 2025 book of business of $2.5 million in billables is projected at $2 million in 2026 because one of the GC’s that you work with is retiring and the new GC is bringing in the legal team from her old firm? I know you’d want that gap information at the beginning of the year and not in the middle.
2) As a partner, if there is a gap, wouldn’t you want to know how much additional business you need to bring in to match last year’s billables? I know you’d want to know so you can plan your business development activity and review your rolodex.
3) As a partner, wouldn’t you want to know exactly which clients are lagging on your expected billable hours so you know who to reach out to for work instead of being in the dark? I know that you value information and not wasting time.
This is fundamental for every single partner to do, yet maybe 5% of partners do this. I do this with 100% of my clients, and this data is then reviewed at a firm wide level to identify the individual partner gaps in revenue that will affect the entire firm.
Before any of this data goes to the partnership, I review it 1:1 with each partner so they see their own numbers first, can correct any assumptions I’ve made, and walk into the firm-wide conversation knowing exactly what’s being discussed. No partner is surprised by their own projections in front of the room.
I’m going to share a sample chart of what I review with partners during partnership meetings. A practice group or firm that says they’re going to do $10 million in revenue can now track it to every partner, every client, and it’s based on real data and not guesswork.
Let’s say you’re Partner A, and you don’t do your projections based on your 2025 billables in January 2026. You’ve started the year $335,000 below your 2026 billables goal and you didn’t realize this until March, or in most cases June. You’re now 6 months behind on filling that $335,000 gap, instead of having a full year to plan and strategize. This is where partners start to react instead of being prepared.
Is it scary to see your billable projections in black and white like this? Yes.
Is it better to see it than to be in the dark? Yes.
This is why projections are crucial and give the partners control over the year instead of the year controlling them.
I work with firms and practice groups where partners have never done projections like this before. And yes, projections are probabilities. It’s probable that the client you had $500,000 in billables for in 2025 will do the same this year, and you’re 90% sure of that based on the conversations you had with the GC. Wouldn’t you rather be able to back up your book of business with data like this rather than your assumption?
Very few partners put this data together on their own, and even fewer managing partners require it of their partners. These projections give each partner control over their own numbers rather than stripping it away.
The difference between a partner who plans in January and a partner who scrambles in June is not effort or talent. It is whether someone built the table and did the data review. Either you hire someone to build it for you and hold the partners accountable to it, or you build it yourself and at least walk into your next partnership meeting with a roadmap of where the gaps are. What you cannot afford to do is find out in June what you could have known in January.
