Commerciality for Legal Firms

Partners face the commercial reality every leader knows: not all clients are created equal. Participants decide whether to onboard new clients, retain existing relationships, or divest from those draining profitability. A low-margin referral arrives from another jurisdiction, but client satisfaction and cross-border relationships are at stake. Do you take it? A high-volume client demands aggressive payment terms. Do you accept to fuel growth or push back to protect cash flow?  

Partners scope matters, set SLAs, and invest time in business development to experience how decisions made at the client onboarding stage shape profitability for years to come. 

Key customisable features: 

• Realistic client profiles reflecting your firm’s client mix 

• High-volume vs. key-account relationship dynamics 

• Service level agreements and payment term negotiations 

Links to performance: Client decisions ripple through revenue growth, cash flow, lock-up days, and long-term client satisfaction – teaching partners that who you work with matters as much as how you work. 

Participants allocate their team (associates, paralegals, and themselves) across matters, balancing leverage, utilisation, cost efficiency, and team development. Staff a matter too senior and margins erode. Too junior and quality suffers, risking client satisfaction. Leave talented associates underutilised and they disengage. Overload them and burnout follows. 

The simulation mirrors your firm’s organisational structure with customisable roles and variable cost bases, forcing partners to optimise across competing priorities: profitability, internal satisfaction, and long-term team capability. 

Key customisable features: 

• Customisable roles, salaries, and regional cost structures 

• Adjustable capacity and utilisation thresholds per role 

• Real-time resourcing constraints tied to matter scope 

Links to performance: Staffing decisions directly impact realisation rates, leverage ratios, and team engagement scores showcasing how resourcing choices shape both profit and culture. 

Pricing sits at the heart of partner profitability. Participants set fees for each matter, choosing between fixed and hourly models while navigating the tension between margin maximisation and client retention. They also face the annual challenge many partners avoid: when and how much to increase rates. Wait too long and inflation erodes profitability. Push too hard and clients push back. 

The simulation lets partners experiment with different pricing strategies in real time, seeing how their choices play out across client satisfaction, competitive positioning, and bottom-line margins. 

Key customisable features: 

• Configurable rate cards per role or region 

• Dynamic rate increase scenarios reflecting market conditions 

• Competitive client bids and pricing benchmarks 

Links to performance: Pricing decisions directly affect margins, revenue per client, and recovery rates, revealing how well partners balance commercial pressure with protecting profitability.

After partners finalise client management, staffing, and pricing decisions, the system calculates actual work delivered against original scope. Scope creep emerges. Resourcing mismatches surface. Partners must decide how to respond: write down hours to preserve relationships, bill the full amount and risk client pushback, or find a negotiated path forward. 

Timing matters just as much as amount. A valued client requests delayed invoicing to manage their cash flow. Accommodating them strains working capital. Refusing risks the relationship. Partners experience that when you bill shapes profitability as powerfully as what you bill. 

Key customisable features: 

• Adjustable payment terms (30, 60, 90 days) reflecting your SLAs 

• Customised scope creep and write-down scenarios 

• Configurable client payment realities 

Links to performance: Billing decisions impact revenue, cash conversion and lock-up, revealing how collection discipline sustains firm liquidity and partner distributions.

Performance transparency drives behavioural change, showing partners how their daily decisions compound into meaningful differences. Each round represents one month of activity, annualised to reveal the full-year impact of every decision. Participants watch their choices cascade through the business in real time: profitability shifts, team engagement rises or falls, client satisfaction scores move. The dashboard connects operational decisions to financial outcomes. 

Teams compete to outperform their peers, then dive into the data to understand what drove success. Was it aggressive pricing or disciplined collections? Strategic client selection or optimised leverage? The debrief transforms competition into insight, showing partners which levers matter most in your firm’s context. 

Key customisable features: 

• Weighted scoring criteria that prioritise what matters strategically 

• Customisable benchmarks  

• Bespoke firm-specific KPIs