Image: Aderant
Aderant, a legal business and practice management software provider, announced a new analytical module for Expert ClearView designed to measure aspects of a law firm's general ledger calculated from multiple dimensions. The new general ledger analytical module, or cube, is an array of data resulting from online analytical processing or OLAP. At base, a cube is a two-dimensional spreadsheet with cells containing some measure of the legal business calculated from multiple dimensions. For example, an OLAP cube's cell can calculate the revenue from a number of active matters in New York City, engaged by certain partners, at a point or range in time.
Aderant's new GL cube is part of its Expert ClearView business intelligence product for law and professional firms. The cube aims to give firms the ability to perform financial analysis to improve the performance and profitability of the law firm.
The GL cube supports built-in calculations such as opening and closing balances and tracking retained partnership earnings over time periods. Aderant hopes that Legal support staff familiar with Microsoft Excel will be able to customize and deliver drill-down spreadsheets that lay out mutiple layers of a general ledger for review.
Expert ClearView is built on Microsoft SharePoint 2010, utilizing SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS-based Web parts) and now supports five role-based pages:
• working timekeeper;
• billing timekeeper;
• finance inquiries;
• practice group head; and
• executive.
With the new pages, professionals will be able to see graphical representations or dashboards of how they are performing according to firm-defined goals in, for example, rainmaking or billable hours, which will help lawyers understand where they stand in a firmwide business plan.
Attorney Sean Doherty is LTN's technology editor.
