In the open matter list, one associate carries ninety two files and a colleague down the corridor carries sixty one, so the partner sends the next new instruction to the colleague. Strip out the files where nothing has moved for six months and the order reverses, with thirty eight live matters for the first and fifty seven for the second, who has been saying yes to every new client for a year. Those figures are illustrative, and the pattern behind them is common in firms of five to fifty fee earners.
The open matter list counts files that nobody has closed. Closing a file takes a final bill, a closing letter and a ledger check, none of which earns a fee, so dead files stay open for months. A fee earner who closes promptly looks lighter on the report than one who never closes anything, and the heaviest live workload often hides behind the most ordinary list.
The second distortion is personal. Some fee earners refuse work when they are full and some never do. Allocation at small firms tends to follow whoever answers the telephone or whoever the partner asks first, and the person who says yes keeps saying yes until a date slips. By then the first sign anyone senior sees is a complaint or a resignation letter.
The regulatory position is general and does not move with any of this. The SRA Standards and Regulations expect a firm to keep an effective system for supervising client matters, and the Code for Firms expects it to make sure the people doing the work are competent to do it. A firm that cannot say who is carrying what has no way to show that either expectation is met.
Count the work, not the files
A firm can measure live workload without buying anything. Start by redefining the count. A matter is active if something happened on it in the last sixty days, whether a letter, a time entry or a document saved. Pick the window to suit the work and apply it to everyone alike. The open files that fail the test go on a separate list for closing or review, and the partner now has a number that means something.
Next, weight the active files. A personal injury matter waiting on a medical report demands less this month than one with a disclosure deadline in nine days. Give each file a stage, then count the key dates falling in the next thirty days for each fee earner: court directions, limitation dates, completion dates, hearings and offers with a time limit. Two people with forty active files each are not carrying the same load if one has three dates in the coming month and the other has fourteen.
Two further measures show strain before it turns into loss. One is the number of overdue tasks per person in the case management system. The other is the days since last action on each file, read as a spread for each fee earner rather than an average. A fee earner with a long tail of silences past ninety days is falling behind, whatever their active count says.
Then put the numbers to work at two moments. At matter opening, whoever allocates the file looks at the receiving fee earner’s active count and dates due before accepting the instruction on their behalf. At supervision, the partner reads the same figures with the fee earner, and the conversation moves from ”how are things” to which twelve files have gone quiet and why. A monthly spreadsheet from a system export does the job.
Reading the caseload every night
The difficulty with the spreadsheet is that someone has to build it, and the busiest people in the firm are the ones with no time to do so. The Bracton AI Assistant plugs into the case management or CRM system the firm already runs, LEAP, Clio, Proclaim and others, and reads every live matter overnight. Because it opens every file, it sees for each fee earner which matters have moved, which dates fall due in the coming weeks and which files have gone quiet. It also drafts routine work for review and recovers time that was never recorded. By morning each fee earner has the files needing attention in front of them, and the same flags, read across the firm, show a partner where the load sits. The partner then decides what to reallocate, who stops taking new work for a month and which files to close. Every output waits for a qualified fee earner to sign it off. The same overnight read runs inside Bracton’s own case and client management platform for firms that move across.
Try the count on your own firm first. Export the open matter list, apply the sixty day test, add the dates due in the next thirty days, and compare the result with who you believed was busiest. If you want to see the same reading run against your own records before it goes near a matter file, book a client account review.