Ridgeway Legal
System Mapping Case Study – 2025
Context
Ridgeway Legal is a litigation boutique handling complex commercial disputes. Two partners, eight associates, and four support staff manage an active docket across three jurisdictions. In 2024 the firm added several high-value matters and discovered that internal effort was tilting toward coordination rather than analysis:
Associates spent evenings reconciling filings across court portals.
Paralegals tracked deadlines in separate spreadsheets.
Evidence sets were duplicated when matters overlapped.
Billable hours stayed steady, yet non-billable coordination time rose month on month. The partners wanted a clear view of the underlying mechanics before approving additional hires.
Why They Came to Us
They needed an objective map of how matters moved from intake to judgment and where time evaporated in hand-offs, revisions, and re-filing. Their request: expose the friction, show the real cost, and recommend fixes that preserve legal precision.
What We Found
Over the days we shadowed two live matters — one in discovery, one on the brink of trial — reviewed every deadline tracker, and analysed mail-room logs. Three systemic gaps emerged:
Fragmented Docket Tracking
Each jurisdiction had its own spreadsheet and colour code. When dates changed, updates reached one list but not the others—leading to redundant “confirm deadline” emails.Evidence Version Drift
Depositions, expert reports, and exhibits were stored by author. The same file appeared under multiple paths with slightly different names; associates re-checked citations to avoid referencing the wrong version.Manual Bundle Assembly
Final bundles for hearings were compiled by hand—copying PDFs into a master, paginating, bookmarking, then confirming each hyperlink. Preparation for a routine pre-trial conference consumed eight staff-hours.
The system functioned, but every gap added silent overhead.
What We Delivered
Matter Flow Map — a visual model tracing each stage from engagement letter to post-judgment billing, making ownership, decision points, and file locations explicit.
Deadline Registry — a unified calendar fed by court-portal APIs, issuing automatic alerts 21, 7, and 1 day before every filing, eliminating parallel spreadsheets and the weekly “confirm date” emails.
Evidence Vault — a structured folder template created at matter-open; documents are named automatically by matter-ID, date, and author initials, preventing duplicates and speeding citation checks.
Bundle Automation — a script that merges PDF sets, applies page labels, builds the index, and verifies hyperlinks, reducing hearing-bundle preparation from eight hours to under forty minutes.
Results
Non-billable coordination time down 32 % across the docket.
Missed-update emails on deadlines reduced from weekly to near-zero.
Hearing-bundle production now a task for one paralegal in under an hour.
Partners deferred a planned administrative hire and reallocated budget.
All findings published with client consent; quantitative data rounded to protect commercial detail.