Rhett Burney Law case study: the founder did the math
Nobody handed Rhett Burney an ROI slide. The founder of Rhett Burney Law, a South Carolina family law firm, worked the return out himself: "No, I looked at it like a 45 to 55 ROI, which I would assume. That'll get higher as people get more and more used to it."
The same week his firm was rolling out Ajax, he was evaluating other software too. Different outcome there: "It's just been, it's real seamless. And, you know, the implementation of it has been real easy. I turned down a software package, platform package last week. That had nothing to do with what you do, but it was just going to be a pain. It was going to be too much of a lift."
That contrast is the adoption story in two sentences. Legal software mostly fails at the rollout, not the demo. Ajax installs per machine, calibrates per person, and asks nothing of anyone's workflow, which is why the firm now runs 22 active users.
What the team found
The pattern across the firm was people discovering they had been under-billing without knowing it.
Shelby Flagg: "I realized I was under billing my billables, like my actual, like I'm billing clients. Normally by just like 0.1."
Lisette Marin: "It's actually been great. I've actually been finding it really helpful because I get distracted and I forget to track my time. And then I also realized that I was, like, underbilling. That's a very common thing that I didn't realize how much time I spent on X, Y, and Z."
Allison Crank noticed the drafting improve as she used it: "I feel like it's, yeah, it's learning my language, the more that I actually edit it."
And Anna Zakharchuk named the quiet cost of manual narratives: "I think everyone really likes it. It doesn't feel, at least to me, it doesn't feel like adding on time. Sometimes I'm thinking, how do I explain this time entry? And it's also like, eventually you just get brain fogged."
The strongest endorsement is a referral
Burney travels to a quarterly meeting of lawyers from around the country. His plan for the next one: "I go to a quarterly lawyer meeting around the country. We go to Puerto Rico in March. I'll definitely bring it up." By his own account, he has been pushing Ajax to peers like crazy.
Referrals from working customers are how most firms find Ajax, and they are the reason we publish stories like this one with the customer's own numbers in them.
Frequently asked questions
Where does a 45 to 55 times return come from? From tenths of an hour. When multiple timekeepers each recover a handful of 0.1s and 0.2s daily, the recovered billing dwarfs the software cost, and Burney expects the multiple to rise as habits deepen.
How disruptive is implementation? Burney's word is seamless: per-machine installs, individual calibration calls, and no workflow changes. Compare that with what to expect in an Ajax pilot.
Is under-billing really that common? Yes. Most lawyers round down when unsure, and firms typically find 5 to 15% of billable time never makes the bill.
If you want a return you can compute yourself, book a demo and run the Burney math on your own firm.
