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Professional services

Law Practice Collection Rate Calculator

Collection performance for a small practice, and what changing the billing cycle would recover.

Your numbers

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Result

Collection rate 85.94%
Days from work to cash 75
Cash tied up $74,000
Uncollected per month $4,500
Recovered by moving to retainers $10,800 Annual, at the retainer share below
Collection rate is 85.94%, leaving $4,500 a month uncollected. The full cycle from doing the work to being paid is 75 days, and the billing delay is the half you control entirely.

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. Billing delay is usually the larger and more fixable half of the cycle. An invoice sent five weeks after the work competes with a client's fresher obligations and a fading memory of the value. Trust accounting rules govern how retainers are held and applied and are strictly enforced.

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Questions

About this calculator

Which half of the cycle should I attack?

The billing delay, because it is entirely within your control and costs nothing to fix. Monthly billing on a fixed date beats billing when you get round to it.

Do retainers really improve collection?

Substantially, where the matter type and rules permit them, because the money is already held before the work is done. The trust accounting obligations that come with them are not optional.

The formula

collection rate = collected / billed; cycle = days to invoice + days to payment

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