Fee-earner dashboard: what to include and what to leave out

A fee-earner dashboard should answer two questions on one screen: what needs my attention today, and am I on track this month? That means a short list of live items (deadlines, clients waiting, unbilled work) alongside a few rolling measures (chargeable time, realisation, billing against target). If a figure does not change what the fee-earner does next, leave it off.

Most dashboards fail because they are built from the reports a practice management system can already produce, which were designed for partners reviewing performance. This post sets out what to include, how to define it, what to leave out, and a one-page layout. It is part of our series on what a fee-earner is.

What is a fee-earner dashboard for?

Not for judging. For acting. A dashboard a fee-earner opens every morning should help them decide what to do first. A monthly performance pack for partners is a different document with a different audience, and trying to make one screen do both jobs is a common reason fee-earners stop looking at it.

A useful test: for every item on the screen, ask "if this number changed, what would the fee-earner do differently today?". If the answer is nothing, it belongs in the monthly pack, not the dashboard.

What should a fee-earner dashboard show?

Eight items cover almost every practice area. Split them into two panels.

Panel one: today

• Key dates in the next 14 days, across all their files. Court deadlines, limitation dates, completion dates, expiry of offers.
• Clients waiting on them. Messages, calls and emails from clients that have not had a reply, with how long each has waited.
• New enquiries allocated to them and not yet contacted, with how long each has waited.
• Files with no activity for 30 days. A quiet file is often a file a client is worrying about.

Panel two: this month

• Chargeable time recorded, against a pro-rata target, on a rolling basis.
• Unbilled work in progress, by file, with the oldest first.
• Realisation, or write-offs as a share of recorded time, over the last three months.
• Billed and collected against target, rolling three months.

Everything in panel one is a list of things to do. Everything in panel two is a small number of trends. That split is the whole design.

How should each measure be defined?

Definitions matter more than charts. Write each one down, once, and do not change it without saying so.

• Chargeable time: hours recorded as chargeable against client matters, whether or not yet billed. The target should be pro-rated for leave and adjusted for agreed non-chargeable work. See setting fee-earner targets.
• Utilisation, if you show it: chargeable hours divided by available hours, with "available" defined consistently. Fee-earner utilisation covers the traps.
• Realisation: billed value divided by the value of time recorded, over the same period.
• Unbilled WIP: recorded time not yet billed, at standard rates, by file. See what WIP is in a law firm.
• Clients waiting: inbound client contacts with no reply, counted from the time they arrived, not from the next working day.

What should be left off a fee-earner dashboard?

Leaving things out is most of the work. Common items that do more harm than good:

• League tables. Ranking fee-earners against each other on one screen encourages recording to the table. It also puts supervisors, who record less chargeable time by design, at the bottom.
• Firm-wide figures. A fee-earner cannot act on firm revenue. It belongs in the partners' pack.
• Daily chargeable totals. Too noisy. A heavy drafting day and a court day look like good and bad performance when neither is.
• Anything without a definition. If two people could read the same number two ways, it will cause an argument rather than an action.
• More than eight items. Past that, nothing is important.

A one-page layout you can copy

For firms building one in their practice management system, or even in a spreadsheet to start, a layout that works:

• Top left: key dates, next 14 days. A plain list, nearest first, with the file name.
• Top right: people waiting. Clients and new enquiries awaiting contact, longest wait first, with the wait shown in hours.
• Bottom left: this month's time and billing. Two small bars against pro-rata target, and a rolling three-month line.
• Bottom right: WIP and quiet files. Oldest unbilled work, and files with no activity in 30 days.

Keep colour for one thing only: items that need action. A dashboard where everything is coloured tells the eye nothing.

A worked example of the "people waiting" panel

This is the panel we think is missing from most fee-earner dashboards, and the one that is most directly about clients. A hypothetical Monday morning, read at about 8.40am, for a private client solicitor, with invented details:

• Mrs A, existing client, rang Friday 4.40pm asking about probate timing. Waiting 64 hours.
• New enquiry, lasting power of attorney, web form Saturday 10am. Waiting 46 hours.
• Mr B, existing client, emailed Sunday evening with a question about a gift. Waiting 13 hours.
• Estate agent chasing on a property sale for an estate. Waiting 18 hours.

Shown as a list with the wait beside each, the priority is obvious, and so is the pattern: most of the waiting built up while the office was closed. Chargeable time and billing figures would not have shown any of this. The fee-earner can clear it before 10am, and the firm can see whether out-of-hours contact needs a different answer. The first reply, not the full answer, is what clients feel most. Our guide to law firm lead response time goes into why.

How should the dashboard differ by practice area?

The eight items hold across most work, but what goes in each panel changes. Some examples:

• Conveyancing: key dates are exchange and completion dates, and search and mortgage offer expiries. "Quiet files" matters a great deal, because a purchase that has gone silent for a fortnight usually has a buyer ringing about it. Consider showing matters completed this month alongside chargeable time, since most of the work is fixed fee.
• Family: key dates include hearings, filing deadlines and child arrangements dates. The "people waiting" panel tends to be busy and emotionally loaded, so the wait time matters more here than almost anywhere.
• Litigation: key dates are court directions and limitation dates, and the panel should show which dates belong to files where a junior is doing the work, so the supervisor can see them too.
• Private client: key dates are fewer and slower, but "quiet files" is useful for long-running estates where beneficiaries expect news.
• Legal aid: add the funding-related dates your contract requires, and consider matter starts against allocation. Those rules vary by contract, so take the detail from your own contract managers.

What mistakes do firms make when building one?

• Starting from the data available instead of the questions asked. Build the list of questions first, then look for the data.
• Building for partners and giving it to fee-earners. Different audience, different screen.
• No owner. Someone has to fix a broken feed or a changed definition, or trust in the numbers goes quickly.
• No review. Ask fee-earners after a month which items they actually used, and remove the rest. A dashboard that nobody opens is not neutral: it is a sign the firm built the wrong thing, and it quietly teaches people that the numbers are not for them.

How often should a fee-earner look at the dashboard?

Panel one, every morning, briefly: five minutes is enough if the lists are short and sorted. Panel two, once a week, perhaps as part of a short one-to-one with a supervisor, where it becomes a conversation rather than a verdict. Monthly reviews should use the partners' pack, which can go deeper on trends and comparisons without cluttering the daily view.

How do you roll a dashboard out?

Slowly, and with the people who will use it. A sequence that works for most firms:

• Pilot with one team for a month. Pick a team with a supervisor who wants it, not one that has been told to take it.
• Start with panel one only. The "today" lists are useful from the first morning and carry no judgement, so they build trust in the screen.
• Add panel two after the definitions are agreed with the team, not before. Numbers that arrive with a definition people helped write are argued about far less.
• Ask what was ignored. At the end of the pilot, remove anything nobody used, and only then roll it out to the next team.

The goal is a screen fee-earners open because it saves them time, not because they have been asked to.

Should fee-earners see their own targets?

Yes, if the target is fair and explained. A target shown without its assumptions, or a target that ignores supervision and training, becomes a source of anxiety rather than information. LawCare's Life in the Law 2025 research found that almost 79% of respondents regularly work beyond their contracted hours, and that only 31% of those managing others had their targets adjusted for the time that takes. A dashboard that shows a fee-earner falling short of an unadjusted target, every morning, is not neutral. We cover this further in fee-earner retention.

What data does a fee-earner dashboard need?

Most of it already exists in a practice management or case management system: key dates, time recorded, WIP, bills and payments. The item usually missing is the "people waiting" panel, because calls, voicemails and new enquiries tend to live outside the practice management system, in a phone log, a shared inbox or a notebook. Bringing those together is often the hardest part of building the dashboard, and the most valuable. For the wider set of systems a firm uses, see law firm software in the UK.

Where does WasilX fit?

In the "people waiting" panel. Cam, our AI Engagement Coordinator, takes calls on the firm's line at any hour, says it is AI, asks the firm's own qualifying questions, books the call back and sends the firm a summary, so new enquiries arrive with details rather than as a missed call. Each fee-earner's personal assistant covers their calls in court and drafts matter updates for the fee-earner to approve, so fewer clients are left waiting. If that is the gap on your dashboard, we would be glad to talk.

Frequently asked questions

What should be on a fee-earner dashboard? Key dates in the next 14 days, clients and new enquiries waiting for a reply, files with no recent activity, chargeable time against a pro-rata target, unbilled WIP, realisation, and billing and collection against target.

Should a fee-earner dashboard include a league table? Generally no. Ranking fee-earners encourages recording to the table and penalises supervisors, whose chargeable time is lower by design. Keep comparisons in the partners' monthly pack.

How often should fee-earners check their dashboard? The "today" items every morning, and the monthly trends about once a week, ideally in a short catch-up with a supervisor.

What is the difference between a fee-earner dashboard and a partner report? A fee-earner dashboard is for deciding what to do next. A partner report is for reviewing performance and trends. Combining them usually makes both worse.