By Steve Mindel, AAML (Feinberg, Mindel, Brandt & Klein, LLP)

Presenters:

• Ed Kainen, Senior and Managing Partner, Kainen Law Group, PLLC (Nevada)
• Robert Russell, Business Manager, Cage & Miles (California)
• Zach Smith, Founder and Partner, Zachary D. Smith, LLC (Ohio)
• Moderated by Debbie Foster, Chief Executive Officer, Affinity Consulting

The 2026 AAML Midyear Meeting session “Tracking What Matters: How to Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Drive Smarter Decisions” offered a practical, action-oriented roadmap for family law firms seeking to turn data into better outcomes.

Moderated by Debbie Foster of Affinity Consulting, the panel — Ed Kainen (Kainen Law Group), Rob Russell (Cage & Miles) and Zach Smith (Zachary D. Smith, LLC) — framed KPIs not as abstract metrics but as decision tools that align financial health, client service and attorney productivity.

The session began with defining high-value KPIs for matrimonial practices: realization and collection rates, average matter value, time to resolution, attorney utilization, client satisfaction scores and referral conversion.

Ed Kainen emphasized using KPIs to balance profitability with client-centered goals, illustrating how targeted metrics can reveal hidden bottlenecks in case workflows and fee structures.

Rob Russell drilled into operational KPIs and the mechanics of accurate measurement — data sources, consistent coding and reconciled billing — stressing the imperative of clean data before trusting a dashboard.

Zach Smith focused on attorney performance metrics and culture: how to present KPIs to partners and staff in ways that encourage improvement rather than defensiveness and how to link incentives to measurable outcomes.

Practical takeaways included building a simple, prioritized dashboard; setting realistic benchmarks and review cadences; integrating KPI review into firm governance; and starting small with one or two pilot metrics. The panel also discussed technology options, common implementation pitfalls and the role of external benchmarking for context. Throughout, the conversation underscored that KPIs are most valuable when tied to clear decisions — pricing, staffing, case acceptance and process changes — rather than being vanity numbers.

Attendees left with a concise framework to select, measure and act on metrics that drive smarter, client-focused business choices for matrimonial practices.