March 6, 2025 • 11 mins
I spoke with William Dougherty, the Co-founder and CEO of Capacity, a work allocation solution designed to help law firms optimize their resources. We discussed how Capacity addresses the most common inefficiencies in law firm resourcing, the benefits of optimal work allocation to lawyers and their clients, and how the distribution of legal work is evolving in an AI era.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals, a podcast hosted by industry analyst Ari Kaplan,
(00:07):
which shares ideas, guidance and perspectives from market leaders shaping the next generation
of legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speaking today with William Dockerty, the co-founder and CEO
of Capacity, a work allocation solution designed to help law firms optimize their resources.
(00:29):
Hi, William. How are you?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm doing great. Tell us about your background and the genesis of Capacity.
I got into this industry as an attorney. I worked at Denton in London in the UK.
We do training contracts. So that's two years where you're getting scaled up.
Before you qualify and qualified into the sort of EMT team technology practice in commercial contracts.
(00:54):
I was there for four years in Pothil and I guess during that time I stumbled across these problems.
Actually in my first week was alerted to this stuff where I was sort of sitting at my desk
and people were asking me, "Can you help out with this?"
And the honest answer was, "I have no idea. I don't know what this is. I don't know how long it takes.
(01:15):
I don't know how long any of these five things I've got on my desk were going to take.
What do you think?" And quickly, it discovered that that's not a satisfactory answer.
So I guess I learned that there was a real need for a law firm to have a database.
That was the genesis of the idea, just a simple database where you could see everyone in your team
and see how available they were, what they were working on, what kind of stuff they might want to do.
(01:38):
So a bit of a direct-through.
And that was how we got going with Capacity and where the first idea came from.
So for the next four years being an attorney, I learned a lot about what is light to be a lawyer,
how the processes are running in law firms, how, as a lawyer, impacted by those processes.
And I'd be having lunch with friends who are working till four in the morning
(02:03):
and other people who are sitting next door who have nothing to do,
and they're just waiting to go home.
People saying they wanted to do X kind of work and someone else wanted to do Y
and they both didn't like what they were doing and wished that they could swap.
And so all of these sort of quirks were emerging.
And everything was pointing back at this moment where people make work allocation decisions.
(02:25):
So it became clear to me that from our perspective, we think is the most important decision
the law firm makes every day.
So the question becomes, how do you define the best decision and how can we make them more often?
That led me to where I am today trying to solve that problem with my team
by using technology for our client.
How does Capacity work to address some of these common inefficiencies in law firms?
(02:48):
It's an interesting one because it's not just about allocating work.
As I've sort of highlighted, there's these sort of existential, cultural challenges.
And I think when you look at a law firm, you've got the law firm hierarchy
who's trying to steer the ship, you've then got the partners who are effectively the owners of the business
and then the bulk of the workforce, which is the lawyers doing the work themselves.
(03:10):
So when you're thinking about how do you actually address these problems,
you've got to think about how can you make sure everyone wins?
And I think that's where this becomes such a hard problem to solve.
So building something that gives the law firm what it wants in terms of
getting people to consider certain things when making decisions,
also giving the partners what they want.
A great lawyer who's going to make their client happy to excellent work
(03:33):
and not take up too much of their time unnecessarily, I suppose.
And then also in the junior end, great training, career control and trajectory,
great exposure to work.
So I think when thinking about how you solve this problem, it's first important to start
with all of these different personas and understanding the people at play.
What that translates to in practice is effectively a really powerful search.
(03:57):
So you are someone who needs either to build a team
or you need to get something reviewed quite quickly or something like that.
And you log into our product and you tell us a bit about the work.
We've built algorithms which we customize for clients
to help find the best person.
So they define what the best person looks like based on what their priorities are
(04:18):
as a business.
That might be based on how busy a team is or training and development or diversity
or whatever else.
And then we branch all of that data and say,
here's the best team for the job and here's why we think that.
And then it's down to the person who's making that decision to confirm that
or have conversations and make sure that they're checking the homework.
But what we're trying to do is make a really easy experience to get from the whole
(04:43):
firm down to just the best possible candidate as quickly as possible.
How are law firms currently addressing these challenges?
There is a range all the way from not addressing these challenges
so which I think fewer and fewer law firms are sort of in that bucket
these days than when we started.
All the way to building their own solutions.
(05:03):
Some firms have built their own custom solutions to these kind of problems.
There are few technology providers in the space, not very many,
about a small handful.
Generally law firms are starting with identifying the bare-bone data that they need.
We need availability data.
We likely need some historic information that's relevant.
(05:24):
We might need some skilled data that's relevant.
The challenge that everyone's having is,
how do we get that data?
Who's filling it in?
And how do we maintain it?
And then sure is that correct?
If I say I'm available on Monday and you start making staffing decisions on Monday morning,
likely by Monday afternoon that's no longer the case.
So the reliability of it is really key.
(05:45):
The starting position for most firms is let's collect that information from our associates
and probably review that at a partner meeting or send a report to partners.
That's like the beginning of their journey all the way through to
bringing in a specialist provider like capacity to help them really level that up.
And that's where the firms are perhaps a little further along in their journey.
(06:06):
And now wanting to get into the realms of what we would refer to strategic workforce planning.
So really delving into how do we make our lawyers better lawyers with each allocation?
How do we spot gaps where we might need to hire people?
Or how do we make decisions based on what's most cost effective?
And where it's much more strategic?
Or that you'll need a lot more data and sophisticated software to achieve those goals?
(06:31):
What are the benefits of this type of optimal work allocation to the lawyers and also to their clients?
From my perspective as the next lawyer is really important that work allocation
solution account for the lawyer experience.
There's a lot of solutions from other industries that are trying to sell into law firms with varying
(06:52):
success. Part of why they've not been as successful as they might hope is actually don't appreciate
how different the culture of a law firm is and the way in which lawyers working and how they feel
about their role within the organisation. For the lawyers on the junior end one of the main
benefits is increased autonomy. Most folks that I speak with feel that they don't have
(07:14):
all that much control often they'll leave in pursuit of that control.
And so for the juniors a lot of it is empowering them to put their finger on the scale when
it comes to this kind of thing and I actually enable them to have more autonomy which the research
shows is a two-time stronger correlate with job satisfaction than things like pay, remote working,
(07:36):
flexible working. So actually if you want them were engaged workforce and there's loads of
studies out there around how the people who you train yourself make better partners. Obviously
retention costs are astronomical. It's over half a million dollars per associate you lose these days.
So that's the benefit to the firm as well. But I think for the juniors it's about training and
(07:56):
development. It's about autonomy. For the senior lawyers they're the experts. They're already highly
successful in what they do. For them I think it's a lot more around profitability and the data
and also retaining the people that they want to keep. If you have a star pupil and they work a bit too
much and you push them out the business then everybody loses. On the senior end it is much more
(08:18):
around the data and the insights and how that enables them to run a more profitable practice for
themselves. And then lastly the firm it's really about the higher level strategic stuff. The stuff
that keeps the C3 at awake at night. How do we compete in this market? How do we make sure we
are attracting the best lawyers? How do we make sure we're delivering on the culture that we're
(08:39):
selling to the market? We have a specific cultural identity. How do we make sure we are that in practice?
This is the kind of thing that work allocation solution can really help with whether that's
training and development or hours or quality of work. Whatever it is that the firm is selling to
its lawyers we can help support them ensure that the lawyers are getting that. How do you see
(09:01):
law firm work allocation evolving? It's going to deepen in the sense that rather than having
some people who are doing everything I think it will fracture a bit more like other parts of the
business where you have quite specialist roles. So you'll have people who are more focused for example
on the pastoral care. Some people who are more focused on the data side. Some people who are more
(09:24):
focused on actually the manual staffing. At the moment if you're a resource manager which is
typically the job role assigned to folks in the space you're doing all of that and obviously that's
a lot of different skills to ask in one person. It will likely become more specialist. I also think
the firms are going to be leveraging technology more for this kind of thing especially as we move
(09:47):
into a space where law firms are using more data and running AI programs to get more insights and
to run the business more effectively. I think it's going to be more important than ever to have
structured data and actually work allocation programs are a great opportunity to capture that.
Right now that information is lost in the email chains and it's not really used again where the
(10:08):
formal program can capture, structure that and package it up for use in the rest of the firm.
So I think the data side of it is going to be super important and also I see an increased focus
for law firms on training and development. So I think hitching these things together and seeing
that actually the way in which we train and develop lawyers is by giving them the work. So work
(10:28):
allocation should be one of the absolute key component of any strategy that's focused around
training and developing our staff. This is Ari Kaplan speaking with William Dockerty, the co-founder
and CEO of Capacity, a work allocation solution designed to help law firms optimize their resources.
William, thanks so very much. Thanks, Ari. Nice to meet you.
(10:50):
Thank you for listening to the Reinventing Professionals podcast. Visit ReinventingProfessionals.com
or Ari Kaplan Advisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals, a podcast hosted by industry analyst Ari Kaplan,
(00:07):
which shares ideas, guidance and perspectives from market leaders shaping the next generation
of legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speaking today with William Dockerty, the co-founder and CEO
of Capacity, a work allocation solution designed to help law firms optimize their resources.
(00:29):
Hi, William. How are you?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm doing great. Tell us about your background and the genesis of Capacity.
I got into this industry as an attorney. I worked at Denton in London in the UK.
We do training contracts. So that's two years where you're getting scaled up.
Before you qualify and qualified into the sort of EMT team technology practice in commercial contracts.
(00:54):
I was there for four years in Pothil and I guess during that time I stumbled across these problems.
Actually in my first week was alerted to this stuff where I was sort of sitting at my desk
and people were asking me, "Can you help out with this?"
And the honest answer was, "I have no idea. I don't know what this is. I don't know how long it takes.
(01:15):
I don't know how long any of these five things I've got on my desk were going to take.
What do you think?" And quickly, it discovered that that's not a satisfactory answer.
So I guess I learned that there was a real need for a law firm to have a database.
That was the genesis of the idea, just a simple database where you could see everyone in your team
and see how available they were, what they were working on, what kind of stuff they might want to do.
(01:38):
So a bit of a direct-through.
And that was how we got going with Capacity and where the first idea came from.
So for the next four years being an attorney, I learned a lot about what is light to be a lawyer,
how the processes are running in law firms, how, as a lawyer, impacted by those processes.
And I'd be having lunch with friends who are working till four in the morning
(02:03):
and other people who are sitting next door who have nothing to do,
and they're just waiting to go home.
People saying they wanted to do X kind of work and someone else wanted to do Y
and they both didn't like what they were doing and wished that they could swap.
And so all of these sort of quirks were emerging.
And everything was pointing back at this moment where people make work allocation decisions.
(02:25):
So it became clear to me that from our perspective, we think is the most important decision
the law firm makes every day.
So the question becomes, how do you define the best decision and how can we make them more often?
That led me to where I am today trying to solve that problem with my team
by using technology for our client.
How does Capacity work to address some of these common inefficiencies in law firms?
(02:48):
It's an interesting one because it's not just about allocating work.
As I've sort of highlighted, there's these sort of existential, cultural challenges.
And I think when you look at a law firm, you've got the law firm hierarchy
who's trying to steer the ship, you've then got the partners who are effectively the owners of the business
and then the bulk of the workforce, which is the lawyers doing the work themselves.
(03:10):
So when you're thinking about how do you actually address these problems,
you've got to think about how can you make sure everyone wins?
And I think that's where this becomes such a hard problem to solve.
So building something that gives the law firm what it wants in terms of
getting people to consider certain things when making decisions,
also giving the partners what they want.
A great lawyer who's going to make their client happy to excellent work
(03:33):
and not take up too much of their time unnecessarily, I suppose.
And then also in the junior end, great training, career control and trajectory,
great exposure to work.
So I think when thinking about how you solve this problem, it's first important to start
with all of these different personas and understanding the people at play.
What that translates to in practice is effectively a really powerful search.
(03:57):
So you are someone who needs either to build a team
or you need to get something reviewed quite quickly or something like that.
And you log into our product and you tell us a bit about the work.
We've built algorithms which we customize for clients
to help find the best person.
So they define what the best person looks like based on what their priorities are
(04:18):
as a business.
That might be based on how busy a team is or training and development or diversity
or whatever else.
And then we branch all of that data and say,
here's the best team for the job and here's why we think that.
And then it's down to the person who's making that decision to confirm that
or have conversations and make sure that they're checking the homework.
But what we're trying to do is make a really easy experience to get from the whole
(04:43):
firm down to just the best possible candidate as quickly as possible.
How are law firms currently addressing these challenges?
There is a range all the way from not addressing these challenges
so which I think fewer and fewer law firms are sort of in that bucket
these days than when we started.
All the way to building their own solutions.
(05:03):
Some firms have built their own custom solutions to these kind of problems.
There are few technology providers in the space, not very many,
about a small handful.
Generally law firms are starting with identifying the bare-bone data that they need.
We need availability data.
We likely need some historic information that's relevant.
(05:24):
We might need some skilled data that's relevant.
The challenge that everyone's having is,
how do we get that data?
Who's filling it in?
And how do we maintain it?
And then sure is that correct?
If I say I'm available on Monday and you start making staffing decisions on Monday morning,
likely by Monday afternoon that's no longer the case.
So the reliability of it is really key.
(05:45):
The starting position for most firms is let's collect that information from our associates
and probably review that at a partner meeting or send a report to partners.
That's like the beginning of their journey all the way through to
bringing in a specialist provider like capacity to help them really level that up.
And that's where the firms are perhaps a little further along in their journey.
(06:06):
And now wanting to get into the realms of what we would refer to strategic workforce planning.
So really delving into how do we make our lawyers better lawyers with each allocation?
How do we spot gaps where we might need to hire people?
Or how do we make decisions based on what's most cost effective?
And where it's much more strategic?
Or that you'll need a lot more data and sophisticated software to achieve those goals?
(06:31):
What are the benefits of this type of optimal work allocation to the lawyers and also to their clients?
From my perspective as the next lawyer is really important that work allocation
solution account for the lawyer experience.
There's a lot of solutions from other industries that are trying to sell into law firms with varying
(06:52):
success. Part of why they've not been as successful as they might hope is actually don't appreciate
how different the culture of a law firm is and the way in which lawyers working and how they feel
about their role within the organisation. For the lawyers on the junior end one of the main
benefits is increased autonomy. Most folks that I speak with feel that they don't have
(07:14):
all that much control often they'll leave in pursuit of that control.
And so for the juniors a lot of it is empowering them to put their finger on the scale when
it comes to this kind of thing and I actually enable them to have more autonomy which the research
shows is a two-time stronger correlate with job satisfaction than things like pay, remote working,
(07:36):
flexible working. So actually if you want them were engaged workforce and there's loads of
studies out there around how the people who you train yourself make better partners. Obviously
retention costs are astronomical. It's over half a million dollars per associate you lose these days.
So that's the benefit to the firm as well. But I think for the juniors it's about training and
(07:56):
development. It's about autonomy. For the senior lawyers they're the experts. They're already highly
successful in what they do. For them I think it's a lot more around profitability and the data
and also retaining the people that they want to keep. If you have a star pupil and they work a bit too
much and you push them out the business then everybody loses. On the senior end it is much more
(08:18):
around the data and the insights and how that enables them to run a more profitable practice for
themselves. And then lastly the firm it's really about the higher level strategic stuff. The stuff
that keeps the C3 at awake at night. How do we compete in this market? How do we make sure we
are attracting the best lawyers? How do we make sure we're delivering on the culture that we're
(08:39):
selling to the market? We have a specific cultural identity. How do we make sure we are that in practice?
This is the kind of thing that work allocation solution can really help with whether that's
training and development or hours or quality of work. Whatever it is that the firm is selling to
its lawyers we can help support them ensure that the lawyers are getting that. How do you see
(09:01):
law firm work allocation evolving? It's going to deepen in the sense that rather than having
some people who are doing everything I think it will fracture a bit more like other parts of the
business where you have quite specialist roles. So you'll have people who are more focused for example
on the pastoral care. Some people who are more focused on the data side. Some people who are more
(09:24):
focused on actually the manual staffing. At the moment if you're a resource manager which is
typically the job role assigned to folks in the space you're doing all of that and obviously that's
a lot of different skills to ask in one person. It will likely become more specialist. I also think
the firms are going to be leveraging technology more for this kind of thing especially as we move
(09:47):
into a space where law firms are using more data and running AI programs to get more insights and
to run the business more effectively. I think it's going to be more important than ever to have
structured data and actually work allocation programs are a great opportunity to capture that.
Right now that information is lost in the email chains and it's not really used again where the
(10:08):
formal program can capture, structure that and package it up for use in the rest of the firm.
So I think the data side of it is going to be super important and also I see an increased focus
for law firms on training and development. So I think hitching these things together and seeing
that actually the way in which we train and develop lawyers is by giving them the work. So work
(10:28):
allocation should be one of the absolute key component of any strategy that's focused around
training and developing our staff. This is Ari Kaplan speaking with William Dockerty, the co-founder
and CEO of Capacity, a work allocation solution designed to help law firms optimize their resources.
William, thanks so very much. Thanks, Ari. Nice to meet you.
(10:50):
Thank you for listening to the Reinventing Professionals podcast. Visit ReinventingProfessionals.com
or Ari Kaplan Advisors.com to learn more.
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