Dunlap Law case study: best month ever, month two
Tricia Dunlap runs Dunlap Law, a Virginia firm practicing corporate and business law, M&A, nonprofit law, and trademark work, and she runs it deliberately tech-forward. Ajax was one of the first AI products the firm bought. Her reasoning: "I saw it as an immediate and effective way to address so many problems all at once."
The problem underneath was the one every managing partner knows. Attorneys were not recording time when they should have, the firm was losing revenue it had already earned, and the records understated the work being done for clients.
Her design constraint for any fix was blunt: "I certainly don't want attorneys spending time to enter time. That's absurd."
Month two
Ajax runs in the background on each attorney's computer, drafts entries from the actual work on screen, and leaves each person a short review. No timers, no reconstruction, and, in Dunlap's words, basically no excuse for time entries not getting done.
The result arrived fast. The firm's second month on Ajax was its best billing month ever at the time. Her assessment of why: "There was no question that a big part of our strong revenue growth was from capturing all of the hours we actually worked." Then she added the kicker: "A novel idea."
She flagged it in real time back then, too. From her note to us during that first stretch: "FYI, it appears that we're having our first 6-figure month in sales... Coincidence that it is the same month as when we started using Ajax? Probably not."
The firm has since grown past that record, which is the point of the exercise.
Her associate Brandy Brown caught the mechanism on an ordinary day: "Just found about $400 in billable activities from yesterday that I would've forgotten to record without AJAX!"
The flat-fee twist
Here is the part that surprises people: Dunlap Law bills flat fees wherever it can. The firm still tracks time on everything, because flat-fee pricing only works if you know what the work actually costs. Ajax made that knowable without taxing anyone: complete time data on every matter, captured automatically, informing how the firm prices.
So the same tool does two jobs. On hourly work it recovers revenue directly. On flat-fee work it powers the pricing model. More than a year in, Dunlap describes Ajax as integral to the firm's whole strategy.
On working with our team, through a shared channel her firm still uses today: "The support has been absolutely outstanding."
Frequently asked questions
Why would a flat-fee firm track time at all? To price accurately. Dunlap Law tracks everything so it knows whether its flat fees match the real work, and Ajax produces that data without anyone entering time by hand.
How fast should a firm expect results? Dunlap Law's best-ever billing month came in month two. Most firms see the missed time surface in the first week; here is what to expect week by week.
What does tech-forward adoption look like? Quiet. Ajax installs per machine, drafts in the background, and each attorney reviews their own entries. See how automatic time tracking for lawyers works.
If you want revenue growth without new clients or new hires, book a demo and capture the hours you already work.
