Maximizing Utilization, Cutting Manual Time Entry, & More: Our 2024 in Review
Reflecting on a year of unprecedented growth and innovation as we charge into 2025. We had big wins: from increasing utilization +7% at a Big-4 firm, to sweeping UX changes that save professionals up to several hours per week on timesheet creation. Plus: we saw our name in the Times Square lights.
2024 was an inflection year for Laurel
One of our biggest wins: increasing utilization by +7% at a Big-4 firm. These gains resulted in this client expanding Laurel wall-to-wall across its United Kingdom and Ireland jurisdictions – with plans to go global in 2025. You can learn more about Laurel's business impact at this Big-4 firm in this case study.
And it wasn't only accounting firms seeing gains in utilization— in 2024 one of our AmLaw customers increased billable time by +27 minutes per day thanks to Laurel. This will extrapolate to $15,746,400 in bottom-line profit when they roll out firm-wide in 2025. Read more about the case study here.
Other highlights in customer delivery:
- We decreased compliance errors by 92% at an AmLaw firm → which resulted in a 2% realization uplift for the global firm
- Conducted time data analysis at a Top-20 Accounting firm which enabled the firm to unpack utilization and realization for its fixed-fee business, which resulted in increased margin for the firm
- Enabled lawyers and CPAs on Laurel to spend only 3-5 minutes/day to do their time (a 66-80% decrease from the time it took pre-Laurel) even though they are charging 28-minutes more / day
We launched +200 features and updates to Laurel
Our AI Time platform grew, and our most impactful updates included:
Improvements to help professionals spend less time on timesheets. We improved our GenAI clustering and reduced the number of user actions needed to create timesheets by an order of magnitude, and implemented step function improvements to our AI classification and AI work codes (see here). Combined with sweeping improvements to our user interface, Laurel timekeepers are spending only minutes each day validating and releasing timesheets.
Better support for manual timekeeping workflows. We released material improvements for professionals who prefer using timers to capture work activity, and creating their timesheets from scratch. Professionals can now operate these workflows seamlessly in Laurel, and still reap the benefits of GenAI narratives and AI-powered work groups speeding up the process.
Point-of-time-entry compliance with Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs). Laurel allows firms to implement OCG rules at the firm, client, and/or matter level, and our GenAI accounts for those rules to ensure compliant narratives.
Giving admins more control. We released Time Control 2.0 to give IT and Finance professionals all the tooling required to administer Laurel wall-to-wall at a global professional service firm.
In addition, we added HIPAA compliance, and renewed our SOC II Type 2 certification. 👉 You can see these updates in action in this product demo video.
In all, these new features and updates culminated in:
- Growing our daily active usage by +5x
- Reducing the time needed to validate and release a timesheet to just 5.8 minutes per day
- Our average lawyer and CPA billing +25 more minutes of chargeable time per day—and this is on top of what professionals see using legacy tooling.
Lastly: we got some exciting acknowledgment for the work we're doing:
- Inc 5000 & Deloitte named us one of the fastest-growing private companies in the world—and we were featured in the lights of Times Square as part of this privilege
- SF Business Journal named us one of the fastest-growing companies in 2024
- Will Reed named us to their Top 100 list
- Accounting Today reviewed our platform and Building with AI interviewed us
- Law.com shortlisted us for AI Product of the Year
And we're just getting started
2025 will be the year Laurel crosses the chasm from the global first-mover in AI Time, to the market winner in timekeeping for professional services. Based on current momentum, our goals are to:
- Be in over 75% of the top 20 Enterprise Accounting firms globally
- Be in over 50% of the AmLaw 100 and 75% of the Vault10
- Raise our next round of venture funding to continue compounding our first-mover advantage on AI-time
If you are interested in learning more about any of the above, please reach out to hello@laurel.ai. We would love to share our roadmap, case studies, and customer references with you when you are ready. Thank you for spending your time with Laurel. We are honored and privileged to spend our time with you.
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We transform time into strategic revenue with real AI.
We believe that well-spent days lead to well-lived lives.
We obsess over timekeeping so you can keep your time
A fresh start to the week! What needs to be accomplished?
Don’t forget to take moments to stretch, snack, or share funny videos.
You’re halfway through your week. Have you done the important things yet?
The weekend is fast approaching! What are you proud of this week?
It’s Friday! Close your laptop to soak up your surroundings— or keep it open to continue a project you’re passionate about.
Deep breaths. Deep thinking. Deep conversations. (Or, you know, keep things light!)
Close your eyes and think about the week ahead. How will you value your time?
A fresh start to the week! What needs to be accomplished?
Don’t forget to take moments to stretch, snack, or share funny videos.
You’re halfway through your week. Have you done the important things yet?
The weekend is fast approaching! What are you proud of this week?
It’s Friday! Close your laptop to soak up your surroundings— or keep it open to continue a project you’re passionate about.
Deep breaths. Deep thinking. Deep conversations. (Or, you know, keep things light!)
Close your eyes and think about the week ahead. How will you value your time?
