Problems › We Have Too Many Products › Law Firms
Proliferation costs are real, mostly invisible, and land on the practice groups that were paying for everything. What makes this harder for law firms is structural: 19 of 28 equity partners aged 55 or over with no formal lateral hire programme or associate-to-partner track for eight years. Any credible answer therefore has to hold 82 % realisation and 68 % utilisation in the same view, which is exactly where most internal analysis stops because the two live in different systems.
Proliferation costs are real, mostly invisible, and land on the practice groups that were paying for everything. What makes this harder for law firms is structural: 19 of 28 equity partners aged 55 or over with no formal lateral hire programme or associate-to-partner track for eight years. Any credible answer therefore has to hold 82 % realisation and 68 % utilisation in the same view, which is exactly where most internal analysis stops because the two live in different systems.
Practice groups accumulate because each addition is individually justifiable and nothing is ever removed. The cost is not in any one of them; it is in the complexity they collectively impose — fee earner time split across matters, changeovers between practice groups, support knowledge, partner attention, forecasting error on lock-up days.
That cost is borne disproportionately by the profitable core, because that is where the capacity being fragmented lives. Which is why rationalisation often increases total profit even when the removed groups were nominally contributing to the £24.8 m gross revenue.
The analysis worth doing ranks groups by contribution against the constraint they consume, then asks which of the tail exists for a reason — a strategic client or channel requirement — and which exists because nobody has looked, given 82 % realisation and 68 % utilisation across equity partners.
These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.
✓ A minority of practice groups produces the large majority of revenue
✓ No practice group has been discontinued in several years
✓ Lock-up days and support demands are rising faster than billable utilisation
The move that usually makes it worse. Cutting the tail by revenue rank alone, which removes groups that were cheap to carry and keeps ones that quietly consume equity partner time.
It is for you if you run or finance a law firm and a minority of lines produces the large majority of revenue. It is the situation where the numbers are available but nobody has put them in an order that produces a decision.
It is not for you if Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
Below is an excerpt from a real run of this analysis on a law firm. It is a sample profile rather than a customer, and it is unedited engine output — this is the format you get, on your own numbers.
The subject is Ashgrove Legal LLP, a sample company profile used for testing rather than a customer — £24.8 m gross revenue from five practice groups.
Excerpt from a real Percision run · Quick Market Scan · sample company profile
The move. Scale the only practice hitting 88 % realisation to fund its own growth and close the succession gap.
| Investment required | £240 k (remaining FY2026 discretionary cap after £180 k IT commitment) |
| Expected return | 1.4–1.6× cash-on-cash within 24 months at current realisation rates. |
| Revenue, year 1 | £25.4–25.7 m firm-wide (+£0.6–0.9 m incremental) |
| Revenue, year 2 | £26.5–27.1 m firm-wide (+£1.1–1.3 m incremental from B&F segment) |
| Revenue, year 3 | £27.8–28.6 m firm-wide (+£1.3–1.5 m incremental) |
| Exit criteria | Strategy must be reversed if, within 18 months, segment revenue has not reached £2.4 m annualised OR cumulative net profit contribution is below £150 k, OR if any lateral hire’s personal billings fall below 1 200 hours in any rolling 6-month period. |
This is one move out of a full analysis. Read a complete report — every page, no email required.
This question routes to Matrix Strategy, one of 29 engagements the platform runs. For law firms it works through 82 % realisation, 68 % utilisation, £184 k profit per equity partner and 112 lock-up days, then produces the sequence rather than a list of options — which move first, what it funds, and the observation that would say the sequence is wrong.
You watch the analysis get built before paying anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.
Contribution per unit of the binding constraint, then a check on strategic dependencies. Revenue rank alone gets this wrong in both directions.
Some will, and the analysis should price that before the decision rather than after. Usually the revenue at risk is smaller than the complexity cost being removed, but it should be a finding rather than an assumption.
It is rarely tracked, which is why it grows. A workable proxy is the trend in operating cost per unit of volume; when that rises while volume rises, complexity is the usual explanation.
Materially, yes. 19 of 28 equity partners aged 55 or over with no formal lateral hire programme or associate-to-partner track for eight years — which changes both the diagnosis and the order of the fixes. The metrics that decide it here are 82 % realisation, 68 % utilisation, £184 k profit per equity partner, and an answer built on industry-general benchmarks will usually point at the wrong one first.
Less than most people expect. Your last twelve months of revenue and cost split the way you already split it, plus whatever you hold on 82 % realisation and 68 % utilisation. The analysis is explicit about what it is assuming where your data stops, which is more useful than waiting for numbers you may never have.
Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
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