Professional services
Law Practice Capacity Calculator
Works capacity in billable hours, where the constraint is attention rather than clock time.
Result
Business arithmetic for running a practice, not legal advice. Fee agreements, contingency limits, trust accounting and advertising are all governed by the rules of professional conduct where you practise, and several are strict. Check the applicable rules before any of this affects a client agreement or a marketing decision. Concurrent load matters more than annual throughput for service quality, because it is what determines whether anything gets dropped. Matters that run longer than expected are the normal case rather than the exception, which is why the reserve is not optional.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Timekeepers times available days times realistic billable hours per day gives annual capacity, with the revenue that represents at current rates. Capacity in a practice selling time is hard-edged: an hour not billed this week cannot be billed later, so unused capacity is permanently lost rather than deferred.
What moves the number
- Realistic billable hours per day, which is well under a working day.
- Non-billable obligations including administration and development.
- Leave, holidays and training.
- Matter mix, since some work bills more densely than other work.
Where this one goes wrong
A target set at or near the length of the working day assumes every hour is billable, which no practice achieves, and the result is chronic overrun and burnout rather than higher billings. Build the target from the hours that remain after administration, business development, supervision and professional obligations. The other caution is that pushing utilisation toward the ceiling raises error risk in work where errors have consequences, so capacity has a practical limit below its arithmetic one.
Before you quote
- Subtract non-billable obligations before setting a daily target.
- Treat unused capacity as lost rather than deferred.
- Keep headroom, since errors in legal work are expensive.
Questions
About this calculator
How many billable hours a day is realistic?
Meaningfully fewer than the working day, once administration, supervision, business development and professional obligations are taken out. Setting a target as though every hour is billable produces chronic overrun rather than higher billings.
Can unused capacity be recovered later?
No, and that is what makes a time-based practice different from a product business. An hour not billed this week is gone, which is why pipeline management and scheduling matter more here than inventory decisions do elsewhere.
Is maximum utilisation the goal?
Not quite, because legal work punishes errors and fatigue produces them. The practical ceiling sits below the arithmetic one, and a practice running at the arithmetic limit is accumulating risk that eventually costs more than the extra hours earned.
The formula
annual matters = usable billable hours / hours per matter; concurrent = annual matters x duration / 12
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How to use this calculator
- Fee earners. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 1.
- Billable hours each per year. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 1,400.
- Average hours per matter. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 24.
- Average matter duration (months). Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5.
- Capacity held in reserve (%). For urgent matters and the ones that run long.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to matters you can carry at once, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Fee earners | 1 |
| Billable hours each per year | 1,400 |
| Average hours per matter | 24 |
| Average matter duration (months) | 5 |
| Capacity held in reserve | 15% |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Matters you can carry at once main result | 20 |
| Matters per year | 49 |
| Usable billable hours | 1,190.0 |
| Concurrent matters each | 20.7 |
| Hours held in reserve | 210.0 |
You can carry about 20 matters at once, 20.7 each, working through 49 a year. 210.0 hours are held back for matters that run long, which most do.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only fee earners, this is what happens to matters you can carry at once. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Fee earners | Matters you can carry at once |
|---|---|
| 1 | 20 |
| 1 | 20 |
| 1 example above | 20 |
| 2 | 41 |
| 2 | 41 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Fee earners
- A number, between 0 and 50, starting at 1.
- Billable hours each per year
- A number, between 0 and 4000, starting at 1,400.
- Average hours per matter
- A number, between 0 and 2000, starting at 24.
- Average matter duration (months)
- A number, between 1 and 60, starting at 5.
- Capacity held in reserve (%)
- For urgent matters and the ones that run long.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Matters you can carry at once | The headline result. A number. |
| Matters per year | A number. |
| Usable billable hours | A decimal figure. |
| Concurrent matters each | A decimal figure. |
| Hours held in reserve | A decimal figure. |
Keep going
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