Transform Your Law Firm’s Work Allocation with viAllocate – No More Excel!

Article written by Brian Creona

Aderant acquired people management software leader viGlobal in 2022. Since then, the vi by Aderant team has steadily continued our tradition of constant innovation for law firm clients. (Our progress is well-documented on our vi by Aderant website – visit us there any time!)

In August, we launched viAllocate, our new solution that helps law firms transform their work and human resource allocation. Work allocation is incredibly important for law firms – it’s about finding the right balance, making sure people are not under- or over-worked, either of which can lead to attrition.

Historically, work allocation at law firms has been a somewhat unscripted process. As a time-honored tradition, many law firms have used an arbitrary “free market system” where if partners get a new client matter, they’ll just choose their favorite associate for the team. Or they might walk down the hall and ask around to see who’s available to take on more work. Let’s face it – neither of those methods are necessarily the most efficient way to distribute work.

Excel spreadsheets can’t accomplish what viAllocate can!
During a recent webinar poll conducted by vi by Aderant, we discovered 40% of attendees were using Excel spreadsheets to manage work allocation. Since Excel requires an extensive manual component, the opportunity for viAllocate to transform and facilitate these tasks proved to be tremendous.

How viAllocate improves lawyer work allocation

Work Capacity Analysis
People who assign work at law firms (partners, etc.) can use viAllocate to see the current, historical and forecasted workload of specific lawyers. viAllocate pulls data from the firm’s billing system to see how many hours these lawyers are currently billing or have billed in recent past. Forecasted workload is typically an estimate from the candidate lawyers saying how busy they’ll be over a future time period, indicating capacity to shoulder more work.

Job Posting/Job Pool
viAllocate can be used to create job posting boards or job pools where lawyers can assign themselves to matters. This approach rewards aggressive go-getters at the firm.

Skills Matching
Another advantage of viAllocate is that work assigners can search for specific skills, language ability, education/certification, or differentiating abilities. viAllocate will then suggest lawyers who have self-assessed as having these skills.

Diversity Points
DEI is a major consideration among both law firms and their clients when it comes to staffing attorney teams. Work assigners can search by diversity points such as gender, race/ethnicity and other factors based on how lawyers self-identify.

Office by Office Comparisons
Leveraging viAllocate, firm administrators can divide out their human resource option, office by office, to see which locations are working at full or over capacity and which firms may have available bandwidth to handle more work. Work can then be shifted to the other office for quicker completion and optimized workload for both locations.

Flexible and Customizable
viAllocate has broad functionality to manage the entire work allocation process. However, firms can use what they want and omit what they don’t need, even on a department-by-department granular level.

Creating Cross-Functional Teams and Encouraging Mentorship
As part of the firm’s lawyer development initiatives, viAllocate can be used to create lawyer teams that are cross-functional or that include informal mentoring opportunities. When building a team, pairing a more experienced attorney with a more junior attorney creates an ideal environment for both lawyers to gain satisfaction.

Discover how viAllocate can help your law firm staff the right lawyers, on the right matters, at the right time to:

• Prevent underutilization
• Reduce burnout & attrition
• Develop legal talent
• Deliver for clients
• Maximize revenue

Learn more about viAllocate.