Who can use this feature?
👤 In-House Legal and Organization Administrator roles
🔑 Needs the 'View organization reports' permission
In this article:
Overview
The General Counsel (GC) Dashboard consolidates key data on legal matters, projects, contracts, and spend management into a single, comprehensive view. With clear, intuitive visuals, it highlights important metrics, enabling legal leaders to effortlessly spot trends and explore data in real time. This tool provides your business with a straightforward way to understand your team's work and contributions, fostering better decision-making and stronger business relationships.
Access the General Counsel reporting -- also called the "General Counsel Dashboard" - from the Reports icon.
If you don't see the icon, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of your screen, go to 'My Profile', then 'Permissions', and enable the 'View organization reports' permission. Note that you'll need an Administrator license in LawVu to do this.
The report defaults to the calendar view for the current year.
However the reports can be viewed for different time periods as well. This allows for flexible and customized report viewing based on your preference and needs. It also helps you compare volumes of work and spend over time, and identify and report on trends.
To view all years, click on the Year dropdown and click off the current year:
To select a year click on the Year dropdown and click on the required year.
To change to fiscal year click on the Type toggle switch. Note that the fiscal year will default to the fiscal year set in the organization settings. (Organizational Settings, Settings, Company Information)
You can view the reports on a "Yearly View," "Quarterly View," or "Monthly View" basis by selecting the corresponding tab in the heading.
When you change the time period the entire dashboard will change, including the time periods that are compared. For example, if you choose the "Quarterly view" tab and select the current quarter, summary comparisons will be made with the previous quarter. This is great if you want to report on specific timeframes or compare trends.
The General Counsel dashboard is designed to be a holistic view of key data across the LawVu Legal Workspace. If you do not have all the modules, some data will be missing and graphs may be empty. Reach out to Support or your Customer Success Manager if you want information on additional modules.
To find out how each graph is calculated, please visit this page: Standard Reporting metrics explained
Learn how to make best use of these metrics by using these Navigation Tips.
Key Metrics Explained
Here are answers to commonly asked questions about the data in the reports. To find out more about details how each graph is calculated, please visit this page: Standard Reporting metrics explained
Dates
What fiscal year is used?
Your organizations fiscal year is used (derived from Organization Settings, Company Information, Financial Settings
What dates are used?
The date picker combines the following dates into a global date filter:
Matters
Created = Created Date
Completed = Completed Date
Contracts
Created = Date Created
In Progress = Date Created
Executed= Date Executed
LSP Budget
Budget = Budget Date
Invoices
Invoice = Invoice Date
Approved = Approved Date
Users
Created = Created Date
Knowledge Base
Article Created = Created Date
External Spend
How are External Spend and Budget calculated?
External spend is the total spend (fees + disbursements) on matters that have been approved, approved with edits or are pending for a Legal Service Provide
Budget is the total of the budget allocated within the Organization Settings, Legal Service Providers, Service Provider Budgets
Budgets are set at a monthly level by either a fiscal or calendar year
What does this metric show me?
This metric shows you your spend compared to budget on Legal Service Providers. A green line means you are under budget, whereas a red line shows you are over budget
Active Matters Spend to Date and Budget
How are Active Matters Spend to Date and Budget calculated?
Active Matters Spend to Date is the total spend (fees + disbursements) on matters that have been approved, approved with edits or are pending
Includes both External (Legal Service Providers) and In-house (Internal)
For Matters with a current status of active
Budget is the fee value or budget entered on a matter (including scoping)
As budget is a total value it cannot be broken down by quarter or month
What does this metric show me?
This metric shows you your total remaining budget (i.e., planned spend) for your active matters against your spend to date. It is designed as an easy quick glance metric to see where you are at with spend against budget at a high level.
Drill deeper into your reports
Apply filters
Date selections are a global filter that will affect the entire dashboard. Some filters will filter the data across multiple related visualizations.
To view the filters affecting the visual, you can access the Filters on Visual icon, which will show you a list of applied filters. To remove all filters and refresh all dashboards, simply click anywhere outside the same graph you filtered on initially.
Drill through the data for a detailed view
Hover over a bar and hold for a second to see the Drill through option to get a more detailed view of the data :
Exclude data to get more insights
Sometimes high volumes of data or outliers can overwhelm a visual chart or graph - for example, if in one period you had a very high number of one contract or matter type. You can exclude this data from your visualization to more easily see the rest of the trends and data in the graph.
Sort the data within a visualization
If you want to answer a new question of the same data set, you can use the sort to get insights. For example, this dashboard is sorted by the current period's most common matters by default; but you can re-sort to understand the previous period's most common matters or sort ascending to see least common.
Export to Excel
Select the Ellipses icon to Export data in a graph as an Excel file .xlsx or .csv file. You can either export the summarized data or the underlying data ( which is used to calculate the data in the visual). Visuals (graphs and charts) are not exported, but you can easily take screen shots or download the entire report.
Sort, filter, view the data as a table
Easily sort, filter, view data as a table or graph, and delve into detailed reports to find the insights you require.
Save the reports as a PDF file
You can use the Download page feature to save the General Counsel dashboard as a PDF file to preserve the current report view. Download page will create a pdf of the report page that you are viewing, as you are viewing it, i.e., with filters etc. It will download the pdf to the downloads folder on your computer.
View this page for more tips and tricks on how to work with your metrics: Navigation tips