Few areas in family-law practice differentiate practitioners as cleanly as Behind the Numbers. The ones who do it well build referral relationships that survive economic cycles; the ones who do it casually pick up the occasional case and never quite know why some clients fit and others don’t.
This piece is for family-law attorneys who already have the basics and are deciding whether to make Behind the Numbers a focus area.
Practical reality for litigators: Behind the Numbers work often becomes evidence. Memos written during analysis can show up in depositions; assumptions baked into early analyses get cross-examined. Family-law attorneys handling Behind the Numbers should write analytical work as if it might be read by opposing counsel — because in contested matters, it often is.
How Behind the Numbers engagements begin
The intake conversation for Behind the Numbers matters does most of the work of the engagement. Practitioners who run a structured intake — covering the client’s objectives, the timeline they’re working with, the co-professionals on the case, the data and documents needed, and the form the deliverable will take — produce engagement letters that hold their shape through the matter. Practitioners who run an unstructured intake produce engagement letters that get rewritten or absorb scope creep silently.
The right intake length for a Behind the Numbers matter is usually 60 to 90 minutes, conducted in person or by video. Shorter intakes miss the depth required for the engagement to be properly scoped; longer intakes overwhelm the client. Many practitioners follow up the intake conversation with a written summary the client confirms before the engagement letter is sent.
The body of the engagement
Analytical work during the middle phase often produces interim findings that affect the engagement scope. A finding the client didn’t anticipate may open new questions; a finding consistent with expectations may close lines of inquiry. The engagement letter should anticipate these scope adjustments and provide a path for handling them without requiring full re-papering.
The middle phase of a Behind the Numbers engagement is mostly about data gathering, analysis, and coordination. The data gathering involves requesting documents from the client and (often) from third parties through subpoenas or formal requests. The analysis involves working through what the documents reveal. The coordination involves keeping the attorney and other co-professionals informed.
How the matter ends
The deliverable for a Behind the Numbers engagement is the work product everyone will reference for years afterward. It needs to be defensible (your analysis can withstand scrutiny), readable (the client and any non-specialist can understand it), and complete (it addresses what the engagement was scoped to address). The deliverable usually takes 20-40% of the engagement hours; underestimating this consistently produces matters that run over time.
Most Behind the Numbers deliverables follow a consistent format that practitioners refine over multiple matters. An executive summary at the top. Background and scope. Methodology. Findings. Conclusions and recommendations. Appendices with supporting documentation. Practitioners who maintain a template they refine engagement by engagement produce stronger deliverables faster than those who reinvent the format each time. For deeper reference, see IRS Publication 504 (Divorced or Separated Individuals).
Matter-specific considerations
Pro bono or reduced-fee Behind the Numbers engagements present a specific risk: the temptation to deliver less rigorous work than the practitioner would for a paying client. Pro bono cases that go wrong because of insufficient analytical rigor damage practitioner reputation more than paying cases that go wrong, because the quality gap is visible.
High-conflict matters require different communication and documentation discipline than cooperative ones. In high-conflict Behind the Numbers engagements, every communication may eventually be reviewed by opposing counsel or a judge; the practitioner needs to write as if the matter will be litigated, even when it won’t be.
Practitioners who want to make Behind the Numbers a meaningful part of their work should commit to the long timeline. The first year produces little visible return. The third year shifts. By year five, the work and the referrals look noticeably different.
How VennBoard fits in
Practitioners who handle Behind the Numbers repeatedly find that the back-office infrastructure is the difference between a practice that scales and one that absorbs the practitioner. VennBoard provides the structured workspace that lets you focus on the substantive work — the part that actually compounds.
Practitioners interested in seeing VennBoard’s case-management infrastructure for Behind the Numbers work can learn more at VennBoard.com.
Further reading
ABA Family Law Section resources
Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement