Galbraith Family Law case study: a 32x pilot, then waves
Galbraith Family Law is a dedicated family and divorce practice with 21 lawyers and a support team of more than 40 people across four Ontario offices: Barrie, Newmarket, Oakville, and St. Catharines. Founder Brian Galbraith has practiced family law since 1990, and the firm is known for a client-centred model built around its WeCare Program.
In a practice that bills by the hour, the constant challenge is capture. Some timekeepers post their time late. Others, often the most conscientious ones, quietly undervalue their hours and record less than they actually worked. Either way, real work goes undocumented, and the firm spends administrative energy chasing time that should already be on the file.
A two-week test
Galbraith started with a two-week pilot in the summer of 2025: eight lawyers and clerks ran Ajax alongside their normal workflow. Ajax reads the work happening on screen, the client email, the drafted motion, the document review, and turns it into ready-to-release time entries within seconds. Nothing has to be reconstructed from memory at the end of the day.
The result decided it. Across the group, Ajax surfaced an extra $252 in billable time per user each workday, and the pilot returned 32 times what it cost.
Naila Waheed, one of the firm's family lawyers, put it this way: "He noticed that my billings actually were, I think, 0.6 more per day with the use of the app. So I was like, oh my god, that's pretty crazy, because I didn't even feel like I was doing anything different."
Her colleague Elan Mendelsohn ran the math even more simply: "Even if I catch one doc, it pays for itself, right?"
Then the waves
From there, Galbraith expanded Ajax across the firm in waves, until lawyers and clerks across its offices, from the owner to the newest law clerks, were letting Ajax draft their time as they worked. The lift held as the group grew:
Measure | Result |
|---|---|
Extra billable time captured per user, per workday | +1.6 hours |
Added billable time captured each month | $17,863 |
Ajax entries released by the average active user | 184 |
The team also liked what the entries said. Ajax writes in each person's own voice and often captures more detail than a lawyer would jot down under time pressure. Shannon More, a family lawyer at the firm: "It's descriptive, for sure. It's more detailed than I would otherwise put in my dockets, which I don't think is a bad thing. I think it gives more of an outline to the client of what has actually gone into it."
Law clerk Jessie Deley described her actual working day: "I have 25 tabs open at all times. If I'm thinking about a matter, I have to have the tab open or else I probably won't think about it. But even if I click into it quickly and leave, it hasn't been tracking stupid stuff."
And Andrew White found the thing every busy lawyer recognizes: "One thing that I have found works for me is that it catches some things that I would let slip through the cracks. So, for example, a task that I had completely forgotten that I had done, I could then go look through quickly and just sort of say, oh, yeah, I forgot I did this, and I could add a docket for it."
Frequently asked questions
Does Ajax work for Canadian law firms? Yes. Galbraith runs Ajax across four Ontario offices, and hundreds of law firms use Ajax across the US and Canada. For firms that need it, captured raw data can be stored in Canada. Read more in our guide to Ajax for Canadian law firms.
How long does it take to see results? Galbraith's pilot ran two weeks, which was enough to measure an extra $252 per user per day against the firm's own billing history. Here is what to expect week by week in an Ajax pilot.
Do lawyers actually adopt it? Adoption at Galbraith ran from the owner to the newest law clerks, because there is nothing to learn: Ajax drafts entries in the background and each person reviews and releases their own time.
If your firm bills by the hour and you suspect time is going undocumented, book a demo and see what Ajax finds in your first two weeks.
