Legal & ComplianceFinance & AccountingOpen accessPublished 2 Oct 2026
Matter budgeting and ongoing WIP/variance monitoring. Build phase-based fee estimates at matter setup, run bottom-up budgets by jurisdiction or workstream, calculate contingency, and structure AFA arrangements (fixed fee, capped fee, phased fixed fees). Ongoing monitoring: WIP tracking against budget, proportionality assessment (spend vs progress), variance commentary with root cause analysis, forecast-to-complete, realisation monitoring, write-off analysis. Trigger on: 'build a budget', 'fee estimate', 'what will this cost', 'WIP review', 'budget vs actual', 'how are we tracking against budget', 'we're over budget', 'realisation is poor', 'what's our ETC', 'budget for th…