ROI calculator
What is manual assembly actually costing your firm?
Fixed revenue plus variable assembly hours means margin is decided after the engagement letter is signed. Move the sliders to your practice and see the number.
Your practice
Merit-based petitions typically run 12–20 hours; H-1B runs 6–9.
AILA practice benchmarks put this at $35–55/hr.
Around 85% of boutique firms bill merit petitions on a fixed fee.
Monthly result
$8,486
recovered every month after the Solo Practice subscription
- Assembly hours reclaimed
- 195 hrs
- Assembly labour today
- $10,125
- Assembly labour on Docket Build
- $1,350
- Solo Practice subscription
- $289
- Margin on flat fees
- 85.0% → 97.6%
- Pays for itself after
- 1 petition
Modelled on a 2-hour post-adoption assembly baseline measured across design-partner firms.
Reading the model
Four inputs, and why each matters.
- Petitions per month
- Determines your tier and the multiplier on every hour saved. It is also the number most partners under-report — count RFE responses and refilings, because they consume assembly capacity too.
- Assembly hours per petition
- The honest way to get this is to time three matters end to end. Merit-based petitions run 12–20 hours; H-1B runs 6–9; family matters run 7–10. Most estimates given from memory are low by about a third.
- Burdened paralegal cost
- Not base pay. Salary plus taxes, benefits, software, workspace and the supervision time a senior paralegal spends. Typically 1.3–1.5× base hourly.
- Average flat fee
- Used only for the margin line. Around 85% of boutique firms bill merit petitions on a fixed fee between $3,000 and $9,000.
Assembly hours per petition
Where the hours go, and where they stop going
- EB-1A22 hrs→55 min
- EB-2 NIW18 hrs→45 min
- O-1A16 hrs→40 min
- L-1A12 hrs→30 min
- H-1B8 hrs→22 min
Bar length is total manual assembly time. The coloured segment is what still needs a person. Manual baselines from AILA law practice management benchmarks; Docket Build figures measured across design-partner firms.
Not modelled here
- Avoided RFE responses at 8–15 unbillable hours each
- Capacity displaced by RFE work in a volume practice
- Revenue pulled forward when matters do not extend 2–4 months
- Paralegal hires deferred and their ramp cost
Excluded deliberately — they are real but slower to verify, and we would rather understate.
Method
On the assumptions.
Where does the two-hour post-adoption baseline come from?
It is the median across design-partner firms measured over their first two quarters, and it deliberately includes attorney review time rather than only machine time. Firms filing high volumes of the same petition shape typically land under an hour; firms with unusual matters land above two.
Why does the model exclude RFE response savings?
Because RFE rate improvement takes two to three quarters to show up in a firm's own data, and we would rather the calculator understate than overstate. Firms that do include avoided RFE response hours generally see the figure roughly double.
What burdened rate should I use?
Salary plus employer taxes, benefits, software, workspace and supervision — typically 1.3 to 1.5 times base hourly pay. AILA practice management benchmarks put immigration paralegal burdened cost at $35 to $55 per hour.
Does this account for the ramp period?
No. Expect two to three weeks before assembly time reaches steady state while templates, Bates conventions and criteria packs are configured. The first month will look worse than the model; month three onward will look like it.
Next step
Run it on one of your own matters.
A 20-minute demo assembles a redacted matter from your own files, so the comparison is against your actual work rather than our numbers.
14-day free production trial · no card · real matters · no watermark
Software for licensed attorneys. Not legal advice.