It’s time to drop the mystery and fear around a litigator’s book of business. When I first heard that phrase as a young associate, I naively believed it referred to an actual spreadsheet that all attorneys have on hand, giving them a daily summary of how much their effort and skill is worth — and more importantly, what they could expect to bring to a new firm if they ever worked up the nerve to leave their present position.
As I matured as a lawyer and joined my equity partners to make business decisions for our firm, I learned that books of business are not nearly so literal or refined. As a civil litigator, I saw the inherent challenges with trying to place any meaningful value on a client list that shifts with each passing trial or settlement. Like trying to measure the weight of water flowing through a stream, trying to measure the financial impact of an ever-shifting stream of clients brings challenges that many of our transactional colleagues will never know. When the lawyer who drafts contracts solves an especially difficult challenge for a client, the lawyer will likely receive more contracts or requests for assistance as a result of their demonstrated competence. On the other hand, when a litigator resolves an especially difficult case for a client, the client likely hopes they never have to speak with their litigator again. How then can litigators assign value to a book of clients who hope to never see them again?
This question became especially relevant to me in the early spring of 2025, when I shared with my partners that I was thankful for their trust in me but that I’d be departing the firm in a month’s time to start my own firm. As I was getting ready to announce my decision to my partners, I was also trying to wrap my brain around how best to think about and attempt to put numbers to revenue I might expect in the coming months.
It strikes me that there are at least four potential models that help solve this challenge. Those models fall into two broad approaches: looking backward and looking forward.
In looking backward, one might be tempted to simply calculate the average of historical working fees over a multiyear period, then assume that the coming 12 months at the new firm will mirror that average. The big problem with this approach is that it fails to account for variances year-over-year, which could, depending on the character of one’s litigation and related settlements, be significant. Historical averages also fail to account for nonbillable and nonperiodic time sucks, like moving houses, taking maternity leave, losing a loved one, training that new associate, or building out a new compensation system for the firm — all of which could make a historical average “not indicative of future results.”
While not perfect, historical approaches do have the benefit of leveraging real numbers and real performance metrics, even if they rely on data points that may be outliers. There are, I’ll propose, two models we can build that leverage historical data, but also apply filters to it, in an attempt to mirror the real-world challenge of trying to port clients from Old Firm to New Firm.
Model One requires a tabulation of the attorney’s working fees by month, going back at least a year, but ideally two or three (trying to avoid years with nonbillable and nonperiodic time sucks). Rather than merely taking the monthly average of this tabulation, calculating 75%, 50%, and 25% of this number creates a filter that provides useful revenue forecasts if 75%, 50%, or 25% of an attorney’s clients followed them, and if the attorney were at least as productive and efficient in New Firm as they were in Old Firm.
Because one might object to this model on the basis that it fails to account for the attorney’s ability to attract new business, since it accounts only for fees earned (regardless of the source), Model Two proposes a very similar tabulation and calculation to Model One, except instead of tabulating working fees, it tabulates only fees earned as a result of clients originated by the attorney. When modeled out at 75%, 50%, and 25% of the average monthly fees resulting from clients originated, the results of Model Two give the departing attorney an even more refined measurement of what their own efforts are likely to yield, if varying percentages of clients follow them.
Model Three attempts to marry the past with the future by considering not a historical pile of earnings but instead earning potential, based on the individual lawyer’s overall productivity. Although some firms neither calculate nor publicize this metric, a strength of my prior firm was its focus on each lawyer’s effective rate. For the uninitiated, a lawyer’s effective rate is simply their working fees received divided by the hours billed to realize those fees, which figure answers the question: For each hour this lawyer works, how much is the firm likely to receive in revenue?
This rate has far greater importance and application beyond this model, but it is the core component of Model Three. If you don’t know your effective rate, calculate it today. Once you have this rate, multiply it by the number of hours per day you believe you will be able to actually bill in New Firm (e.g., seven, nine, or 11). Then multiply that number by the number of working days in an average month (I use 19.25, after backing out weekends, 12 federal holidays, and 18 vacation days from the year). By calculating this for various numbers of hours you might bill a day, you’ll begin to develop a range of where your monthly revenue is likely to fall, if your effective rate remains close to its present figure.
Model Four is the only model that is truly future-oriented. Such an approach is far more complex but, arguably, far more useful. One of the uncommon skills that experienced litigators bring to the table is an uncanny ability to assess the present and, from that, forecast the future. What if we could use this learned skill to forecast future time commitments, likely fees, and client behavior? If we could do that, not only could we build more useful budgets for our clients, but we could also start modeling out various revenue scenarios in those quiet moments when we’re staring at a spreadsheet late at night, wondering if now is the time to tell the person closest to us that we’re about to upset the apple cart.
Model Four leverages observations from the present and incorporates data about the future to create a data-informed forecast about revenue in the months ahead. In the text that follows, I’ll provide step-by-step instructions for building out Model Four.
Model Four starts out with a list of the names of all clients down the left-hand side of the page. Next to their names, make two columns. In the first column, take a few moments to think critically, then write in your best forecast for the likely revenue this client’s case is likely to bring to New Firm in the next 12 months. In the second column, take another moment to think critically, and then indicate with a LOW, MED, or HIGH notation whether you believe there is a low, medium, or high chance of the client moving with you to New Firm. Once you have all three columns populated, total the 12-month revenue from clients you believe have a low, medium, and high chance of moving with you. Divide each of those by 12 to see the three different monthly revenues you might expect if your low, medium, and high chance clients move with you to New Firm.
When I suggested taking a moment to “think critically,” I really meant thinking very critically about all that surrounds us. It’s probably a several-day project, if seriously thought through. To build it well, Model Four involves consideration of factors as diverse as the following examples:
There are probably 10 more factors that deserve to be on this list (I would welcome hearing other suggestions), but this short list reveals that the factors that drive clients to make decisions about staying at Old Firm or moving to New Firm go far beyond whether one attorney or another believes the client to be in their book of business. In fact, Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4(b) reminds us that clients are the ones who should make informed decisions about who they want representing them — this choice is not the lawyer’s or law firm’s to make.
What I love most about Model Four is that it is a reminder that our clients are not rows on a spreadsheet, but people and business owners who share our concerns about family challenges, economic conditions, outstanding balances, and whether the leap we’re taking appears both safe and reasonably calculated to lead to success. Model Four requires us to see our clients in their full humanity and recognize that, like us, their decisions can be fickle, impulsive, and often based more on emotion than on logic or math.
What I found to be true over the past four weeks since my firm and I sent out joint letters is that clients are far more concerned about relationships than about brands and firepower. Clients didn’t even seem all that concerned about which attorney “originated” them at the firm. Time and time again, when clients would send in their letters electing to move with me, they would say something along the lines of, “You’re my guy — I’m not switching midstream to someone who doesn’t know me.” What ended up mattering in the end was not effective rates or historical origination averages, but the degree to which I had come alongside a client, held their hand, told them I saw the path forward, and that with their hand in mine, I was going to confidently lead them toward our shared vision for the future. When my clients believed that no one at the firm cared more about their litigation than I did, the choice made itself — they stuck with the attorney who knew them and helped them feel known.
If you’ve not yet put pen to paper (or keyboard to spreadsheet) to build out one or two of these models, doing so is a worthwhile exercise. It will likely take you less time than the time you invested in reading this piece, and it will transform your book of business from something imaginary and maybe scary to something real and useful and perhaps the basis for that big plan you’re about to hatch. But as you start pulling reports and running numbers, don’t lose sight of the lesson I never expected to learn in this process: For all of the modeling and data-crunching you can do to build a forecast, the exercise of forecasting becomes less relevant if your work and commitment to your client’s litigation causes them to ultimately conclude, “You’re my guy.”
