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What a law office manager should review every week: seven numbers are enough
Published 7 September 202625 Rabiʻ I 1448 AH4 min read
In short
You do not need a dashboard with twenty charts. A ten-minute review on Sunday morning is enough if you look at seven numbers: this week's hearings, deadlines falling within two weeks, overdue tasks, cases with no movement for 30 days, active cases per lawyer, cases opened and closed this month, and last week's hearings with no recorded outcome. Each of them leads to an action, not to a report.
Why Sunday, and why ten minutes
The Saudi working week starts on Sunday, and the hearing that will be missed this week is missed before Thursday. The weekly review is not a performance appraisal; it is a search for the forgotten thing while it can still be fixed. So it is short, and it comes straight from the system rather than from a file an assistant prepares on Thursday night, because a number compiled by hand is a week late and wrong.
The seven numbers
- 01
This week's hearings
How many, who attends each, and what must be prepared. Two hearings in two courts at the same hour for one lawyer show up here before they show up in court.
- 02
Deadlines falling within 14 days
An appeal, a cassation petition, a response to an enforcement order. Two weeks leaves time to write the memorandum; one week does not.
- 03
Overdue tasks, by lawyer
Not the total of overdue tasks, but whose. Ten overdue tasks on one lawyer mean redistribution, not a reminder.
- 04
Cases dormant for 30 days
An active case with no hearing, no task and no document for a month. Either it is waiting on the court, in which case a note says so, or it has been forgotten.
- 05
Active cases per lawyer
The count alone is not enough, but the gap between twenty cases for one lawyer and six for another deserves a question. Read it with each lawyer's hearings this month.
- 06
Opened and closed this month
If more cases open than close, month after month, the firm is accumulating work nobody sees until a date is missed.
- 07
Last week's hearings with no recorded outcome
A hearing that took place with nothing written about what happened or the next date. This is a discipline number: if it is not zero, the system does not know what the court knows.
The meeting itself
- 1Two minutes: the week's hearings on the screen, a name against each. Nobody leaves until every hearing has a name.
- 2Two minutes: the deadlines within two weeks, and for each, who writes and when it goes for review.
- 3Two minutes: overdue by lawyer, and what must be moved is moved now.
- 4Two minutes: dormant cases, and for each either a note explaining the silence or a task that moves it.
- 5Two minutes: last week's hearings without an outcome, recorded in the meeting, not after it.
Anything beyond that waits for the monthly meeting. A weekly review that grows long gets cancelled within two months.
What is not worth your time weekly
- Completion rates and averages: the average case duration does not change in a week, and leads to no action on Sunday.
- Cases by type: useful for a hiring decision, not for this week's.
- Comparing lawyers by case count alone: it punishes whoever carries the heavy cases and rewards whoever carries the light ones.
Monthly and quarterly
| When | What is reviewed | The decision it serves |
|---|---|---|
| Every month | Cases by type and status, the closure rate, the average duration | Do we take this kind of case? Where is the firm slow? |
| Every quarter | Each lawyer's load over three months, and client concentration (how much work comes from one client) | Hiring, redistribution, and the risk of depending on one client |
| Every year | The archive: closed cases whose documents need archiving and whose closure needs confirming | The next conflict check depends on what stays here |
Common questions
- Do I need a system for these numbers?
- With ten cases, a spreadsheet is enough. With fifty cases and three lawyers, a number compiled by hand on Thursday is stale by Sunday, and a spreadsheet does not catch a dormant case.
- Who attends the weekly review?
- The responsible partner and the lawyers. The assistant attends if they run the calendar, not to take minutes; what is decided is recorded in the system during the meeting.
- The lawyers have equal case counts, but one is drowning. Why?
- Because the count does not measure weight. Read the case count alongside each lawyer's hearings this month and deadlines within two weeks. One case at appeal with a near deadline equals five cases at notice.
- What do I do with a dormant case?
- One question to the lawyer: what are we waiting for, and from whom? If the wait is on the court, a note says so with an expected date; if it is on us, a task is created with a date.
Where these numbers come from in QanoonTech
The calendar's week view brings the firm's hearings and deadlines onto one screen in both calendars. The case list filters by stage and lawyer, and the task list by overdue and assignee. The reports page shows active cases and those opened this month and this year, pending and overdue tasks, the closure rate and average duration, cases by status and type, tasks by status and priority, and team performance, with a CSV export for anyone who wants a spreadsheet. The partner sees all of it; a lawyer sees their own.
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