Frederic Dorwart, Lawyers PLLC

AeroVision used Power BI to create attorney utilization reporting off of FDLaw’s matter, time entry, and accounting data. FDLaw uses ProLaw to manage matters. ProLaw is on-premise, while Power BI is on the cloud. FDLaw did not want to open up their ProLaw database to the internet, so they agreed to a workaround with a simple manual step: 

• Power BI connects to an Excel spreadsheet in Sharepoint
• The Excel spreadsheet contains a connection to the ProLaw database. This connection is only active when the spreadsheet is in FDLaw’s network
• Once per month, someone at ProLaw downloads the spreadsheet to their computer on the ProLaw network, refreshes it, and uploads it back to Sharepoint
• Power BI picks up the changes to the spreadsheet overnight

Using the dashboard, FDLaw quickly identified the following:

• Which attorneys were over-utilized.
• The simpler matters assigned to these experienced and over-utilized attorneys
• Under-utilized junior attorneys with the capacity and ability to take on these matters

This data provided FDLaw with actionable data to improve the quality and timeliness of its service. It also provided direction for FDLaw’s management in coaching their attorneys to delegate. At the end of the day, the dashboards provided fast and direct answers to questions that used to require hours of sifting through time entries.