You'll find this valuable if you:

You manage legal budgets for an organization with multiple outside counsel
Your current system can't show real-time legal spend by matter, region, or vendor
You're tired of being surprised by budget overruns when invoices arrive
You spend too much time chasing spreadsheets instead of providing strategic advice

What you'll learn:
How a Fortune 500 real estate company eliminated budget surprises, gained 100% spend visibility, and reduced reconciliation time by 4x using a custom legal budget tracking solution.

The in-house legal team struggled with coordinating multiple outside counsel firms across their global operations without proper visibility into external legal spend. Their existing systems lacked the granular tracking capabilities needed to monitor costs effectively, while data privacy concerns prevented integration with internal budgeting systems. Without early forecasting abilities, they couldn't identify potential budget discrepancies or cost overruns until it was too late, resulting in missed opportunities for significant savings across their extensive legal portfolio.

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Disjointed
Communication

Case updates were scattered across emails and disconnected systems.

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Lack of
Operational Visibility

Attorneys and staff had no shared dashboard to track progress or see who was responsible for what.

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Limited
Executive Insight

Leadership lacked a consolidated view of active matters, upcoming deadlines, or case performance metrics.

Are outside counsel costs often creeping up without you noticing?

Can you see how much each legal matter is costing the business at any given time?

What is the breakdown in spend by matter, region, or business unit?

Is manual reconciliation the best way to figure out where the money went?

How much confidence is in your legal budget for the next 12 months?

Can you defend your legal budget and forecast with data, or is it largely based on assumptions?

Can you easily predict what might derail next month’s forecast, understand how and why?"

Are you suprised outside law firms exceed agreed budgets only when invoices arrive?

How do you track which vendors are delivering commercial value and which aren’t?

Can you compare spend and performance across your panel of firms?

How long does it take to prepare a legal spend report for the CFO?

Are you tired of chasing spreadsheets and emails to justify spend?

Should your team be spending less time gathering info to create reports, and more time advising?

What would it feel like to finally get proactive alerts before budgets are blown?

How would it change the legal operations if risk were caught early on with direct visibility and oversight?

How much more confident would you be if you had one clear view of all legal spend at any given time?

Rolling Forecasts
& Budget Visibility

Compares forecasted costs with actual expenses each month, quarter, or year. Highlighting significant variances and trends in law firm costing accuracy to provide quarterly budget snapshots, allowing teams to track cost movements and adjust forecasts as needed.

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Integration with
Existing Systems

Structured budget data was pushed back into enterprise matter management systems, bridging the gap between high-level legal trackers and detailed spend forecasting, ensures smooth data flow and consistency across platforms.

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Law Firm
Performance Insights

Evaluates the accuracy of law firm forecasts, enabling benchmarking and accountability at the vendor level, helping teams assess law firm performance and adjust vendor selection based on historical data.

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Bulk Budget Entry
& Custom Categories

Enabled legal and executive teams to measure caseloads, turnaround times, and outcomes in real time.

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Budget Types
Supported

Supports various budget types, including 12-month rolling forecasts, lifetime budget tracking, and options for quarterly or monthly cost tracking. This flexibility allows teams to tailor budgeting methods to their needs.

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Centralized &
Real-Time Visibility

A centralized system offers a single source of truth for litigation budgets, reducing reliance on scattered Excel files and fragmented communications. Dashboards provide near real-time insights into spend and projections, improving decision-making and team collaboration.

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Decision Support
& Custom Reporting

Empowers in-house teams with custom reporting tools to make strategic decisions based on real-time financial data. Reporting cadences are flexible, allowing teams to adapt the insights to their specific business needs.

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B2B Distributed
Access Model

This model ensures confidentiality by allowing outside counsel to only view their own data. It maintains secure access, preventing unauthorized data visibility and protecting sensitive information.

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Phase 1

1. System Assessment

Understand where you are today.
We evaluate your current tools, data, and workflows to identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities.

2. Process Mapping

Visualize how work really gets done.
We map your existing processes end-to-end to reveal inefficiencies and define what good should look like.

3. Integration Planning

Connect the dots for seamless operations.
We design a roadmap for how your systems and data will work together—so everything speaks the same language.

process

Phase 2

1. Core Development

Build the foundation for long-term success.
We develop the core functionality based on your mapped processes and prioritized requirements.

2. Migration

Move your data with confidence.
We plan and execute a structured migration to ensure data integrity, minimal disruption, and full traceability.

3. Testing

Validate before you launch.
We rigorously test the system across real-world scenarios to catch issues early and ensure everything works as expected.

migrate

Phase 3

1. Deployment

Go live with confidence.
We roll out the solution in a controlled, structured way—ensuring a smooth transition from old to new.

2. Training & Documentation

Equip your team to hit the ground running.
We provide clear, role-specific training and documentation so users know exactly how to get the most from the system.

3. Support Setup

Ensure long-term success and stability.
We establish the right support channels, SLAs, and escalation paths to keep everything running smoothly post-launch.

deploy

1. System Assessment

Understand where you are today.
We evaluate your current tools, data, and workflows to identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities.

2. Process Mapping

Visualize how work really gets done.
We map your existing processes end-to-end to reveal inefficiencies and define what good should look like.

3. Integration Planning

Connect the dots for seamless operations.
We design a roadmap for how your systems and data will work together—so everything speaks the same language.

process

Results & Benefits

4x Faster
Reconciliation

Reduced manual effort, freed up legal and finance teams for higher-value work.

100% Legal
Spend Visibility

Minimizing errors and improving trust in reports through centralization of data.

Instant Visibility.
Smarter Budgeting.

Proactive monitoring, faster insights, and better decision-making.

Our client didn’t just need software; they needed a solution that matched the nuanced financial reality of legal operations. Custom, role-based dashboards and reports gave each department tailored visibility into performance and tasks, making it easy to track progress and stay on top of priorities.

The client chose Sympo not only for our ability to deliver a robust solution, but for our ongoing partnership and responsiveness to their evolving needs. Over time, we’ve continued to enhance the system with new functionality, helping them stay ahead of changing, demanding