Case Closeout Reporting: The Numbers a Contingency Firm Should See After Every Close

After a contingency case closes, three numbers tell you whether it was worth taking: the fee recovery ratio, the expense ratio, and the case duration. The fee recovery ratio shows how much of the recovery the firm kept as fee. The expense ratio shows how much of the recovery went to the costs the firm advanced. The case duration shows how long the matter took to convert into cash. Most personal-injury firms close the file and never look back at these. Reviewed after every close, and compared across cases, they tell you which case types are actually carrying the firm and which are quietly draining it.

Why closeout reporting gets skipped

The reason firms do not do this is not laziness; it is friction. By the time a case closes, the settlement statement is in a spreadsheet, the expenses are scattered across months of QuickBooks Online (QBO) entries, and the fee has landed in the books somewhere. Reconstructing a clean per-case picture means pulling those threads together by hand, one case at a time. Nobody has time to do that after every close, so it happens rarely or never, and the firm keeps taking the same kinds of cases without knowing how the last batch performed.

The cost of skipping it is strategic. A contingency firm’s core decision is which cases to accept, and that decision should be informed by how similar past cases actually turned out. Without closeout numbers, that judgment runs on gut feel and the memory of the one big result, not on the pattern across the whole book.

The three numbers, and what each one tells you

Fee recovery ratio

The fee recovery ratio expresses the firm’s fee as a share of the total recovery. On its own, a single case’s ratio is just a fact. Across many cases, it becomes a signal. If a particular case type consistently produces a thin fee relative to the recovery, once liens and reductions are accounted for, that type may be less profitable than its headline settlements suggest. A healthy ratio on paper can still hide a case that took two years and a mountain of expense to get there, which is why this number is read alongside the other two, never alone.

Expense ratio

The expense ratio shows how much of the recovery was consumed by the costs the firm advanced: filing fees, experts, depositions, and medical-record retrieval. This is the number that most often surprises firms. A case can settle for an impressive figure and still return little to the firm because the expenses to get there were heavy. Watching the expense ratio by case type tells you where your advanced dollars work hardest and where they get buried. It is also a discipline check: a rising expense ratio across a category is a prompt to look at how those cases are being worked.

Case duration and velocity

Case duration measures how long a matter takes from open to closed and collected. Two cases with identical fee and expense ratios are not equal if one closed in months and the other took years, because the slow one tied up the firm’s money and attention the entire time. Velocity, the pace at which cases convert into collected cash, is the number managing partners underweight most often. A firm can be profitable on paper and starved for cash if its cases take too long to close. This is the closeout companion to the broader cash-flow question we cover in cash velocity versus profit, and it relates to the realization-rate discipline hourly firms already track.

Reading the three together

No single ratio decides whether a case type is worth taking. Read together, they describe the shape of a case. A high fee recovery ratio, a low expense ratio, and a short duration is the profile a firm wants more of. A respectable fee that only appears after a high expense ratio and a long duration is a case type to scrutinize, even if the settlements look good in a highlight reel. The value of closeout reporting is that it turns three months of scattered entries into a comparison you can actually make.

Where the numbers come from

LeanLaw includes read-only contingency closeout analytics that surface these figures across cases: fee recovery ratio, expense ratio, and case duration or velocity. Read-only is the operative description. This is a backward-looking view of cases that have already closed, meant for reflection and pattern-finding, not a forecasting dashboard that projects future results. It answers “how did our closed cases actually perform?” so the firm can bring evidence to the question of which cases to take next.

Because the analytics are built natively on QuickBooks Online, a hard requirement, they draw on the same records where the fees and expenses already live, rather than a separate spreadsheet someone has to maintain. The closeout view is the end of the same contingency workflow that runs from the settlement calculator through the frozen statement to a closed case, which we trace in from settlement check to collected revenue. The math done cleanly at closeout is what makes the analytics at the end trustworthy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a fee recovery ratio in a contingency case?

It is the firm’s attorney fee expressed as a share of the total recovery on a case. Reviewed across many closed cases, it helps a firm see which case types produce a healthy fee relative to the recovery, once liens and reductions are taken into account, and which produce thinner fees than their settlement figures suggest.

Why should a contingency firm track expenses as a ratio?

Because the raw expense figure does not tell you whether a case was efficient. Expressed as a share of the recovery, the expense ratio shows how much of each settlement was consumed by advanced costs, and comparing it across case types reveals where the firm’s advanced dollars work hardest and where they are quietly eroding returns.

What is the difference between profit and case velocity?

Profit is what a case returns after fees and expenses. Velocity is how quickly a case converts into collected cash. A firm can be profitable on paper yet cash-starved if cases take too long to close, which is why case duration is read alongside the fee and expense ratios rather than treated as a secondary detail.

Is closeout reporting the same as a forecasting dashboard?

No. Closeout analytics are read-only and backward-looking. They describe how cases that have already closed actually performed, so a firm can spot patterns and inform which cases to take next. They do not project or predict future case outcomes, which is a different kind of tool entirely.