Enhanced lawyer forecasting powered by integrated time recording data helps protect profitability from skyrocketing pay packages, talent attrition, and administrative waste.

London & Chicago, July 9, 2025 – BigHand, a leading provider of legal software solutions, has announced new forecasting and allocation enhancements to its Resource Management product. The changes, which were developed with direct input from leading law firms, address specific industry challenges including workload balance, job satisfaction, and skill utilization.

Over the last few years, firms have increasingly identified work allocation as a major source of profit leakage and attorney dissatisfaction. Allowing partners to allocate via spreadsheets, emails, or multi-hour meetings wastes valuable (potentially billable) time, fails to match associates with their best-suited matters, and leaves lawyers unhappy with their assignments.

BigHand pioneered the use of resource management technology within law firms and continues to innovate as firms face new, evolving threats. Law firms are grappling with a million-dollar associate turnover problem, fueled by disparities in utilization, lack of development opportunities, and work/life balance concerns - pressures that are misaligning associate skills and time, inflating remuneration, and making it harder to retain clients as panel consolidations continue.

BigHand Resource Management now integrates with any time recording software to drastically improve the speed, accuracy, and profitability of lawyer forecasting. Firms can now:

• Easily analyze the performance of past resourcing plans to improve forecasting behaviors and resource planning decisions
• View actual recorded time by matter alongside matter details, forecasted hours, and matter team structure
• Give lawyers a head-start to their week and save significant effort and stress by auto-populating their forecasts with recorded matter time data from previous weeks

The latest update from BigHand also transforms the work concept-to-completion process with better notifications, one-click calendar assignments, and in-app candidate shortlisting, ensuring optimal use of revenue-driving attorneys. The reduced administrative load means more hours can be used on billable, career-enhancing tasks. 

“Constantly raising salaries to boost talent retention isn’t an effective long-term strategy. Only the largest firms with the biggest budgets can maintain that for long,” said Dave Cook, BigHand’s Global Director - Resource Management. “We’re providing more sustainable ways to improve the employee experience while in turn dramatically increasing efficiency and lawyer productivity.”

These more equitable allocation processes help retain top talent and improve client relationships by matching the work to the best available resources. 

BigHand will be exploring the new assisted forecasting features in a webinar on July 30th, hosted by Senior Lead Consultant Alex Robertson. Click here to request a full product demo.