How Cloud-Based Entity Platforms Can Attract Quality Talent

By Steven Pulver

•

Last Updated

Dec 16, 2025

4 min read

What do high quality legal professionals want in a firm?
Make it easier to share minute books
Solve the “single key holder problem”
Dedicate more of your team’s time towards billable hours

Main image - How Cloud-Based Entity Platforms Can Attract Quality Talent

Let’s say you manage a law firm. Business is booming so much that the needs of the legal team outpace the amount of resources your existing team can provide. That means it’s time to expand the size of your office with new lawyers and paralegals.

The skills and job description of a law clerk are fairly consistent from firm to firm, and lawyers are on the job to analyze, administer, and utilize legal files on behalf of their clients. Experienced lawyers and law clerks are motivated to work for firms where they can make the most effective use of their time. One of the ways your firm can stand out is through the technology used by your team of paralegals to simplify their day to day tasks. Young, upstart professionals eager to take on the world are far more attracted to modernized firms that utilize digital, centralized solutions.

What do high quality legal professionals want in a firm?

Trained lawyers and clerks are motivated, go-getting and they want to make a difference for their firms. They recognize the value in spending more time on tasks that can help grow the firm and generate fresh revenue to expand the business.

Since this is the mindset of passionate professionals, what will make your company attractive to eager hires? Firms that believe in and practice innovative solutions are in prime positions to recruit the next generation of quality legal talent. Young upstarts are familiar with how technology automates many rudimentary tasks, and they’re eager to manage more of their own tasks with the assistance of platforms like cloud-based entity management solutions.

Motivated lawyers and paralegals all understand that time is money. They want to execute tasks as efficiently as possible. This includes the process of sharing minute books and chasing down the appropriate party for a signature to help move files along.

Show the next recruit of talent that your firm is a leading innovator when it comes to entity management technology. Use a platform that makes it easy to share entire minute books or gives you the ability to restrict access to particular pages. You’ll have faster, better organized and more secure legal transactions that will help your team complete their tasks more efficiently. They can rededicate more of their own time towards the tasks that are most likely to boost revenue for the firm.

Solve the “single key holder problem”

One of the biggest struggles for any firm is finding the right information at the appropriate times. In many cases, one person is designated as the single key holder or the gatekeeper to many of the firm’s records.

For an upstart legal professional, this way of doing things is not efficient and is deemed unproductive. Using cloud-based entity management platforms, you can solve this problem by hosting all minute books and company recordsin a secure cloud-based database. Anyone with access to the platform can simply go in and pull out the appropriate files to send off on an as needed basis. This helps your team make better use of their own time, which is a very attractive selling point if you want to hire the next generation of talent to your team.

Dedicate more of your team’s time towards billable hours

A 2018 poll of Canadian law firms found that 40 percent of respondents believe that blended or hybrid law clerk/legal assistant positions had become “somewhat more common” in the two preceding years. Another 12 percent of participants anticipated those types of jobs would become even more important over the following two years.

Why is this an important trend? Paralegals have the skills and training to perform many of the tasks that might otherwise be assigned to a legal professional. You can assign billable hours for any work the respective clerk completes for your client’s case, but at a lower rate than a lawyer’s time would be billed, creating benefits for your clients.

It means law clerks can perform valuable work and earn money for your firm. At the same time, you’re not overloading expensive billable hours to your client for fixed fee or routine work. This means you can get the tasks done, earn some money for the effort, and still provide more value-added services to help your clients’ needs.

Are you ready to bring the highest quality talent to your business? Join the MinuteBox revolution so that you can create an environment that is guaranteed to attract the best and brightest law clerks to your firm.

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Report methodology

The Clio team conducted two principal surveys to craft their report. The first survey was administered to 1,446 legal practitioners in the United States between May 31, 2023 and July 20, 2023. Participants included practicing legal professionals, as well as legal support staff like paralegals, law clerks, and office administrators who help run the day-to-day interests of a firm.

The second survey focused on the interests of the general public. 1,012 participants from across the United States were surveyed between June 13, 2023 and June 22, 2023. The survey’s purpose was to gather opinions from the general public about the legal profession. Many participants had hired a lawyer or retained the services of a firm in the past.

Productivity and Legal Recurring Revenue reach new highs

Productivity within the legal industry has significantly improved compared to workflows in 2016. The average legal professional works 25% more cases today compared to seven years ago, and they also record 35% more billable hours.

Improved administrative efficiencies have helped professionals collect more revenue for every hour of legal work. Billable hours and collected revenue have risen over two and a half times compared to 2016 numbers. As a result, Legal Recurring Revenue for legal practices is improving in response to more efficient workflows.

The cost of inflation impacts billable hourly rates

While Legal Recurring Revenue is improving for most firms, individual billable hourly rates are not rising at equal rates. Practicing attorneys have seen their hourly rates rise by 28% since 2016, increasing from $256 per hour up to $327 per hour in August 2023. However, billable hours charged by paralegals have only risen by 19%, rising from $150 to $178 over seven years.

The cost of legal services for clients has risen over the years, adjusting for inflation year over year. But over the past two years, global inflation has spiked to levels not seen since the 1980s. Mindful of the inflationary impact on clients, legal practices appear to be cutting or controlling some of the costs invoiced to clients. It appears that billable hours charged by paralegals are mostly being squeezed by inflationary pressure.

Improved utilization rates elevate invoiced billable hours

In the legal industry, a utilization rate measures how much of a legal practitioner’s eight-hour workday is put towards billable hours for clients. Since legal talent is working 25% more cases and invoicing 35% more billable hours to clients, improved productivity suggests utilization rates are improving.

And the data supports that estimate. In 2016, the average legal utilization rate was 28%. In 2023, that number has improved to 37%, marking a 32% increase in time that’s invoiced as billable hours to clients. If the numbers are broken down, this amounts to an average of three-quarters of an hour of billable time added to daily workloads.

Realization rates are steadily growing but there’s still room to improve

Realization rates determine how much of the time that a firm puts into a particular case ends up invoiced to clients. In 2016, the average firm realization rate was 77%. In 2023, that rate has jumped up to 86%.

While this is a remarkable improvement, the outstanding 14% can still be fully realized. Firms can utilize more modern technology to help bridge the remaining gap in actual rendered work and work that’s invoiced to clients. Automated billing systems produce more transparent invoices sent to clients, while efficient entity management systems can reduce the time that legal talent spends on non-client-facing work.

Entity management systems are law firm efficiency solutions

To help reduce the time and energy that legal talent spends on non-client-facing work, your legal practice needs to utilize modern technology. There’s no better time-efficient solution for legal practitioners than entity management systems like MinuteBox.

Entity management software is an example of cloud-based technology built by legal professionals to help legal professionals. The primary purpose of entity management software is to streamline workflows when creating diligent minute book records for clients.

Legal talent can reduce the time they spend filing, sorting, and managing minute book records. As a result, they can channel more time and energy into client-facing work and further increase billable hours.

Since entity management software is cloud-based, it’s also more efficient and convenient for clients. All minute book records can be accessed from anywhere in the world, enabling client meetings about the records to be conducted at the client’s time. It’s faster and more flexible, and it’s proven to improve client satisfaction rates — increasing the potential for repeat business.

Eager to increase billable hours invoiced by your firm and further augment Legal Recurring Revenue? Join the MinuteBox revolution today and introduce more time-efficient workflows to help your legal team maximize revenue opportunities.

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