By Ken Hardison, Founder of PILMMA
Most law firm owners begin annual planning by looking forward.
They set a new revenue goal, create a marketing budget, identify new hires and build a list of initiatives for the coming year. Everyone leaves the planning meeting feeling excited about the future.
But there is a problem.
You cannot build an effective plan for 2027 until you are willing to face the truth about what happened in 2026.
Not the story you told yourself. Not the explanations your team gave you. Not the projections in your original budget.
The truth is in the numbers.
Before setting next year’s goals, you need to understand what worked, what failed, what you tolerated and what must change.
Start With the Results—Not the Excuses
Unexpected problems matter, but they should not prevent an honest evaluation.
Begin with the goals you set for 2026. Put the original targets beside the actual results.
Examine:
- Gross revenue and net profit
- Cases signed
- Wanted-case conversion rate
- Average fee per case
- Marketing cost per signed case
- Referral cases
- Case-processing time
- Employee turnover
- Owner working hours
For every goal, assign one of three ratings:
Achieved: We produced the result we committed to producing.
Partially Achieved: We made meaningful progress but missed the target.
Missed: We did not produce the intended result.
Do not change the definition of success after seeing the results. If the goal was to sign 500 wanted cases and the firm signed 410, you did not “almost achieve” the goal. You reached 82% of it.
That does not mean the year was a failure. It means you now have accurate information with which to plan.
Where Did the Plan Break Down?
Missing a goal is not the real problem. Failing to learn from it is.
For every missed or partially achieved goal, ask why the result fell short.
- Was the strategy wrong?
- Was the strategy sound but poorly executed?
- Was there no clear owner?
- Did the firm lack enough money, people or capacity?
- Did the team track the wrong numbers?
- Did leadership wait too long to address a problem?
Many firms blame marketing when the real problem is intake. Others blame employees when the real problem is unclear expectations, weak training or inconsistent management.
You cannot solve the right problem if you diagnose it incorrectly.
Keep asking “why” until you reach something the firm can change. “The market was difficult” is an observation. “We continued spending on a declining channel for six months without reviewing our cost per wanted case” identifies a leadership decision that can be corrected.
Examine the Gap Between Leads and Wanted Cases
One of the most important truths for a PI firm is what happens between the generation of a lead and the signing of a wanted case.
Your total number of leads can increase while the quality of those leads declines. Your marketing agency may report more calls, clicks and form submissions while your firm signs fewer valuable cases.
Review each major marketing channel and determine:
- How much did we spend?
- How many leads did it produce?
- How many were cases we actually wanted?
- How many wanted cases did we sign?
- What did each signed wanted case cost?
- What fees has that channel generated or is it expected to generate?
Then review the cases your firm wanted but did not sign.
If your firm converted 90% of its wanted cases, what happened to the other 10%? Were calls answered too slowly? Did the team fail to follow up? Were consultations weak? Did prospects choose a competitor?
Those lost cases may represent one of your greatest opportunities for 2027.
Face the Truth About Your Team
Your employees should be treated with respect, but respect does not require avoiding difficult conclusions.
Ask these questions about every important role:
- Does this person clearly understand what success looks like?
- Do we measure the results for which this person is responsible?
- Does this person consistently meet expectations?
- Does this individual make the people around them better?
- Would I enthusiastically hire this person again today?
When someone is underperforming, leadership must determine whether the problem is skill, training, attitude, capacity or role fit.
The answer may be better coaching, clearer accountability, a more appropriate role or helping the person transition out of the firm.
Keeping the wrong person in a critical role is not kindness. It hurts the employee, the team, your clients and the business.
You should also evaluate the leadership team. If managers repeatedly miss goals without raising concerns early, they are not managing results—they are reporting history.
Face the Truth About Yourself
This may be the hardest part of the review.
The owner is often the firm’s greatest asset and its greatest constraint.
Ask yourself:
- Did I provide clear direction?
- Did I change priorities too frequently?
- Did I hold people accountable—or rescue them?
- Did I spend my time on high-value work?
- Did I avoid a decision I knew needed to be made?
- Did the firm become less dependent on me during 2026?
- Did I model the discipline I expected from my team?
If every decision still comes through you, the problem may not be that your employees refuse to take ownership. The problem may be that you have not allowed them to take it.
If you constantly introduce new projects, your team may not have an execution problem. It may have a focus problem created by leadership.
Honest self-evaluation is not about beating yourself up. It is about reclaiming your ability to change the firm.
Identify What You Tolerated
Your results are influenced not only by what you did, but also by what you allowed.
What did you tolerate during 2026?
Problems rarely disappear because leadership ignores them. They normally become more expensive.
Create a “Stop Tolerating” list for 2027. Keep it short and specific.
Examples might include:
- Wanted leads going more than five minutes without a response.
- Marketing campaigns continuing without measurable returns.
- Meetings ending without decisions, owners or deadlines.
- Managers repeatedly missing scorecard targets without a corrective plan.
- The owner handling work someone else should own.
Your standards are not what you announce at a meeting. Your standards are what you consistently enforce.
Preserve What Worked
Facing the truth is not only about identifying failures.
What worked especially well in 2026? Which marketing channels produced profitable cases? Which employees stepped up? Which systems saved time? Which referral relationships grew stronger? Which decisions improved profitability or reduced owner dependency?
Do not abandon successful strategies simply because they are no longer exciting. Growth often comes from improving and expanding what already works.
Identify the three biggest wins from 2026 and determine how to repeat or expand them in 2027.
Complete the 2026 Truth Review
Before your 2027 planning meeting, prepare a one-page review containing:
- Our five most important goals for 2026.
- The actual result for each goal.
- The three biggest wins.
- The three biggest disappointments.
- The three most important lessons.
- The problems we tolerated for too long.
- The strategies we should stop, continue and expand.
- The single greatest constraint entering 2027.
Have each member of the leadership team complete the review independently before discussing it as a group. You may be surprised by how differently people view the same year.
Those differences are valuable. They reveal communication gaps, competing assumptions and problems that may otherwise remain hidden.
The Truth Creates the Plan
Your 2027 plan should not be a wish list. It should be a response to what you learned in 2026.
If wanted-case volume was the constraint, strengthen marketing.
If leads were plentiful but wanted cases were lost, fix intake.
If the firm signed enough cases but struggled to handle them, improve capacity and operations.
If revenue increased but profit declined, address pricing, case selection and expenses.
If the owner remained involved in everything, strengthen leadership and delegation.
The truth may be uncomfortable, but it is also useful. It tells you where the firm is strong, where it is vulnerable and where your next breakthrough may be found.
Do not rush into 2027 carrying the same assumptions, habits and unresolved problems that limited your firm in 2026.
Face the truth. Learn the lessons. Make the decisions.
Then build a 2027 plan grounded in reality—and strong enough to produce the future you want.
Want More Insights Like This?
This article originally appeared in PILMMA’s Insider Journal, where we share strategies, insights, and ideas designed specifically for personal injury law firms.
Want a preview of what the Insider Journal has to offer? Register below, and we’ll send you a complimentary copy so you can see what’s inside.
About the Author
Ken Hardison
