Doyle & Seelbach case study: more users than employees
Amber Crosby has run legal operations for 30 years. Her assessment of timekeeping over that span: you remind people to enter their time, you chase them at month-end, and you accept that some percentage of billable work will never get recorded. That is just how it works.
Her assessment after rolling out Ajax at Doyle & Seelbach: "It has helped alleviate a pain point I wasn't sure was possible after 30 years."
The firm
Doyle & Seelbach is an Austin, Texas litigation firm founded in 2015 by Trek Doyle and Karl Seelbach, both former litigation partners at Winstead PC. The practice covers personal injury defense and business litigation, the kind of docket where attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants all generate billable time on the same files.
That last detail is what makes this deployment unusual. The firm did not limit Ajax to attorneys. It deployed to everyone who bills time, which is how Doyle & Seelbach ended up with 52 active Ajax users, more users than the firm has employees, once multiple devices are counted. It is the highest adoption density in Ajax's customer base.
What the pilot measured
Measure | Before Ajax | With Ajax | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
Billable hours per day | 4.9 | 5.4 | +0.5 |
Billable dollars per day | $1,365 | $1,489 | +$124 |
Extra dollars per user, per month | $2,853 | ||
Added per month, five-user pilot group | $14,267 | ||
Return on investment | 19x |
The detail underneath the averages is the real story. One attorney had 515 entries under 0.2 hours captured by Ajax, worth $25,428. Another had 370 such entries worth $13,644. These are the one-tenth-hour email reviews and quick calls that nobody records manually, and they were worth tens of thousands of dollars.
What the team says
Crystal Andrade, attorney: "Life-changing, for sure."
Jake Jones, attorney: "Me putting in my time takes like 10 minutes now, if that - and it took so much more time previously."
Gustavo Obregon, paralegal: "I'm finding extra time - about 0.2 hours a day, some days 0.3."
Anusmita Chowdhury: "It's doing the work for me."
Crosby's advice to other administrators
Three things, in her framing. Deploy to everyone, attorneys and staff alike, because paralegal and staff time gets lost just as often. Stop worrying about adoption, because Ajax asks nothing of people; there are no timers to start and no emails to tag. And watch the sub-0.2 entries, because everyone focuses on whether the deposition got billed while the real money is in the constant small stuff.
After 30 years, she is no longer chasing anyone for their time. It is just there.
Frequently asked questions
Should paralegals and staff get Ajax seats? At Doyle & Seelbach, yes, and it is why the firm has more active users than employees. Billable paralegal time disappears from the record just as easily as attorney time.
What does a defense litigation practice gain specifically? Fragmented days. Defense work means constant small interactions across many files, and the pilot showed the under-0.2 entries alone were worth $25,428 for a single attorney.
How do administrators see results without seeing screens? Managers see released time and rollup reporting only. Draft entries and screen activity stay private to each user, which is a big part of why adoption held. More on that in what your boss can see in Ajax.
If month-end still means chasing timekeepers, book a demo and let the time show up on its own.
