Even during boom times, economic challenges may be lurking around the corner.
That’s why it’s critical for law firms to position themselves for long-term success by building economic resilience.
Doing so means strengthening your firm’s fundamentals while always being aware of what could be coming next.
“Just because you have your books and you get your financials, that’s just a report of what has happened,” says Kelley Brubaker, a fractional CFO and host of the “Your Profitable Law Firm Podcast.” “It’s like you’re driving in the car and you’re looking in the rearview mirror. But your focus has to be on the windshield, on what’s coming in the future.”
Kelley participated in a recent webinar titled “Economic Resilience in Action – Helping Law Firms Thrive in 2025 and Beyond,” joined by Kimberly Bennett of Fidu and Scott Berry of MarketCrest.
You can register to view their conversation here, and read on for select steps to ensure your firm has a strong economic foundation, based on Kelley’s recent writings and webinar appearances.
Think Linearly
Metrics like billable hours and revenue, while important, won’t give you the full picture of financial health and resilience.
When Kelley works with a client to determine their KPIs, she matches the metrics they track to their goals for the firm. Each practice is different, she notes, and therefore she would expect five different firms to each have their own unique KPIs to track.
Kelley advises firms to organize their metrics based on information about the past, present, and future.
Items like your P&L and revenue reflect past performance, while the present is reflected in metrics like your bank balance. The future metrics include things like incoming leads.
“How many leads do you have coming in every day or every week?” Kelley says. “Based on your funnel, what’s been your history? If you get a hundred people who call you, how many actually schedule an appointment from there? How many actually show up to the appointments? And then how many hire you?”
Don’t (Just) Cut Costs
Kelley notes that a firm that focuses on its profit and loss may just start slashing expenses to boost profitability.
Doing so can create new sets of problems, though, such as worsened morale or difficult client experiences.
She urges law firms to ask themselves how they can spend more effectively, not how they can simply lower costs.
For example, she says, rather than firing an administrative employee who saves you 10 hours per week, consider reallocating their time to higher ROI tasks.
“Smart spending is about alignment, not discipline,” she says.
Regularly Audit Your Subscriptions
Kelley notes that auto-renewing subscriptions to software and services can quickly add up in law firms to form a major expense.
She recommends you perform a subscription audit every six months (at least). Review factors like the task it accomplishes, who uses it, and whether it duplicates another service.
“Be cautious of free trials that turn into auto-billed subscriptions,” she says.
Consider What 8am Has to Offer
If you’re using 8am MyCase as your law practice management system, Kelley says, you already have a solution that can help you manage expenses more efficiently.
Here are a few features that support better spend management, as shared by Kelley:
• MyCase Accounting: Track expenses by matter or category, link bank accounts, and reconcile monthly to ensure clean data.
• Integrated time and billing: Compare expenses against case revenue to ensure profitability by matter.
• Smart Spend: With optional free, add-on software, easily track every dollar spent in real time and gain financial clarity into your cashflows, using a credit card that integrates with expense and invoicing tools in MyCase.
• Bonus tip: Smart Spend will reduce a large portion of your profit leakage by capturing advanced client costs in real time and automatically adding them to the next invoice issued to the client. Efficiently billing 100% of your client’s advanced costs as soon as possible…that’s solving a huge pain point for many firms.
Kelley Brubaker participated in a recent webinar titled “Economic Resilience in Action – Helping Law Firms Thrive in 2025 and Beyond,” joined by Kimberly Bennett of Fidu and Scott Berry of MarketCrest. You can view their conversation here.