Who is actually carrying the month?
Work gets handed out in turn as it arrives, and nobody notices the result until someone has no room left. Dealing these eight matters round the table puts one fee earner on 120 hours and leaves another 27 short. The optimizer gets everyone to about 110.
Words on this sheet
- Objective: The one number Optimization is trying to push as high or as low as it can go.
Legal Starter Optimization free
After you install, this is the model to open.
Which Lawyer Takes Which Matter?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
Round-robin against the optimized split:
- Busiest, as dealt out
- 120 hours, 93 for the quietest
- Busiest, optimized
- 110 hours
- The three loads
- 110 / 110 / 108
- Best possible
- 110 328 hours, three people
This is one of the rare models where you can check the answer by hand: 328 hours split three ways is 109.3, a matter cannot be cut in half, so 110 is the floor and the optimizer lands exactly on it. The split it finds gives one person only two matters, the two biggest, and almost exactly the same hours as everybody else, which is the whole point: a fair split is a split of hours, not of files. Add a ninth matter and rerun, and you get the honest answer to whether the team can take it.
The model
Eight matters with estimated hours, three fee earners, and a ceiling row that every person has to fit under. The ceiling is a variable cell like the assignment flags, and minimizing it presses down on whoever ends up busiest.
| Matters | 8, from 25 to 62 hours |
| Fee earners | 3 |
| Total budgeted hours | 328 |
| Chargeable capacity each | 120 hours |
| Assignment and the busiest load | solved |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Why is your average claim the wrong number?What Do Claims Actually Cost?
- Is intake growing, or does it just feel busy?How Many Matters Are Coming?
- The venue moves the odds. By how much?Does the Court Change the Settlement Rate?
- A legal matter risk register pricing five case risks against mitigation cost, showing which of the five mitigations lose money in expectation. Free template.What Could Go Wrong in This Matter?
- Which contingency matters actually lose you money?Will the Recovery Cover the Costs?
- What reserve holds nineteen years out of twenty?How Much Should We Reserve Per Matter?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Optimization in Google Sheets.