The 3 things that guarantee profitable work

Delivering bottom-line profits rather than just top-line revenues requires your law firm to do three things well:
 

1. Cost the work.  Unless your firm knows what a particular type of client engagement typically costs it is ill-prepared to undertake anything except client-work at hourly rates.  Since fewer and fewer large clients are willing to accept straight hourly rates firms are now having to be more rigorous in auditing past work to discover how much things really cost.  This is not the same as what was recorded on the file.  All too often lawyers will under-record or not record time at all in a ill-judged attempt to keep client costs down.  A good place to start would be frequently performed simple transactions; ask your lawyers concerned what they did and how long it took.  Really took. Honestly.
2. Agree the price with the client.  Most firms have undertaken some form of training for partners on differing types of pricing models; fixed, capped, success fee, retainer, volume based etc.  Yours probably has too. Have you, however, invested any resources in teaching your partners the how they can frame the pricing discussion to achieve maximum success?  Pricing is an art, not a science and requires skill to set alongside analytical ability.
3. Manage the transaction well.  Firms routinely lose profit in the course of a matter.  Yours probably does too.  Sometimes it’s because the assumptions were flawed, but the client isn’t responsible.  Sometimes the assumptions are flawed, the client is responsible, but the long-term relationship makes billing them awkward.  At other times the scoping changes, yet the final price fails to reflect the revised scheme of work.  In most cases it's because your firm will have failed to perform effective legal project management, and the lost profit is as a result of this failure.

 
So, with a knowledge of cost, agreement of price and management of transaction your firm can ensure that it will make profit from the work it accepts.
Now all you need to do is get more work….