Overview
A Historic Pretoria Firm Sustains a 50% Recovery Ratio
A multi-disciplinary Pretoria practice established in 1930, with 14 to 15 attorneys and more than 60 support staff.
The Challenge
A large, multi-disciplinary practice with significant history needed consistent disbursement recovery across attorneys and support staff.
The Solution
nQ ZebraWorks implemented in 2017, tracking and billing every disbursement automatically.
The Result
More than R70,000 a month in average recovery at a 50% average recovery ratio, sustained since 2017, with a net fee increase over and above these recoveries.
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The complete write-up, including the figures behind these results.
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Pretoria Law Firm Disbursement Recovery in a Practice Established in 1930
Pretoria law firm disbursement recovery at this multi-disciplinary practice has to work across an unusual staffing shape: 14 to 15 attorneys supported by more than 60 support staff. The firm was established in 1930, has run nQ ZebraWorks since 2017, and recovers more than R70,000 a month at a 50% average recovery ratio.
When most of the output is produced by support staff
A four-to-one ratio of support staff to attorneys changes the recovery problem fundamentally. In most firms the person producing a document is the person who knows which matter it belongs to. Here, the bulk of physical output is generated by secretaries, paralegals and administrative staff acting on instructions, often for several attorneys in the same afternoon.
Manual capture in that structure asks the wrong person to make a billing judgement. A support staff member printing three sets of documents for three different attorneys has no realistic way to attribute each correctly under time pressure, and no authority to decide whether a given item should be recovered from the client. Output that cannot be confidently attributed is output that gets absorbed.
Why 50% is a realistic figure for this structure
A 50% recovery ratio is lower than the 85% and 94% figures in some of our other case studies, and that comparison deserves an honest explanation rather than a favourable framing. A multi-disciplinary practice with a large support function produces a great deal of genuinely internal output: file copies, internal circulation, administrative records and duplicate sets that were never recoverable from a client in the first place.
The point of measuring properly is not to push the ratio toward 100%. It is to know which half is recoverable and to capture that half reliably. Meaningful Pretoria law firm disbursement recovery in a practice this size means the unrecovered portion is understood and deliberate rather than accidental.
Eight years of stability
More than R70,000 a month in average recovery at a 50% ratio, sustained since 2017, with a net fee increase reported over and above the recoveries. For a firm approaching a century old, the value of that stability is largely institutional. Attorneys and support staff have turned over several times since implementation while the recovery process has not changed, because it does not depend on any individual remembering to follow it.
What large-support-function firms should measure
Separate recoverable from internal output explicitly rather than treating everything unbilled as leakage, since conflating the two makes the ratio impossible to interpret. Track output by producing department rather than only by attorney, review the internal share annually to confirm it is not quietly growing, and make sure the capture system allocates on instruction rather than on who physically pressed the button.
Related South African case studies
Another Pretoria practice with a different discipline mix is covered in our Pretoria conveyancing and MVA case study, and a much larger firm appears in the 160-user enterprise case study. For the platform behind these results, see nQ ZebraWorks and how it compares with PaperCut.
nQ ZebraWorks comes from Zebraworks, whose invoices-to-cash software sits behind the recovery figures above. Khwezi Holdings handles implementation and support locally.