Introduction

By December, most family law firms are juggling two competing priorities:

• Closing out the current year
• Preparing for a busy January and beyond

If you’re planning to improve your workflow in the new year — whether that means implementing new software, streamlining disclosures, or reducing inefficiencies your team has been struggling with — year-end is actually the ideal time to act.

In this article, I’ll walk through a practical strategy many firms use at year-end: prepaying for the workflow capacity they know they’ll need anyway. When done thoughtfully (and always in consultation with your CPA), this approach can simplify implementation, improve budgeting, and potentially reduce 2025 taxable income.

Just as important, it supports one of the most critical steps in successful implementation: moving your entire firm onto a single workflow at the same time.

Why Year-End Is the Right Time to Plan Workflow Changes

Most firms don’t start January with a clean slate.
They start with:

• Active cases already in progress
• New matters coming in immediately after the holidays
• Staff returning from time off
• Court deadlines ramping up quickly

Trying to introduce new workflows after January is already underway often leads to:

• Partial adoption
• Parallel systems
• Confusion over where data lives
• Inconsistent training
• Delayed benefits

Planning — and funding — your workflow changes before year-end allows you to:

• Start January with clarity
• Onboard your team with confidence
• Avoid running old and new systems in parallel
• Capture efficiency gains sooner

Why Prepaying for Client Matters Makes Practical Sense

If you’ve read Article #4, you know one of my strongest recommendations is this:

When you implement a new workflow, move all active cases into it at once.

That approach dramatically improves adoption and reduces confusion. But it also requires one practical thing:

you need enough capacity to support all of those cases.

Prepaying for Client Matters you know you’ll use anyway allows you to:

• Keep your process consistent for staff and clients, avoiding the confusion of running the old and new processes for different clients
• Support a full-firm rollout
• Avoid rationing usage during onboarding
• Eliminate change resistors from harboring old processes
• Reduce 2025 income tax

In other words, it supports good change management, not just budgeting.

A Note on Tax Considerations (Always Confirm with Your CPA)

Many firms choose to prepay certain expenses before year-end as part of their overall tax planning strategy. Depending on your accounting method and your firm’s situation, prepaying for software or services you’ll use in the coming year may allow you to expense those costs in the current tax year.

This article is not tax advice, and every firm’s situation is different.
Always confirm the accounting and tax treatment with your CPA.

That said, many firms find that aligning workflow planning with year-end budgeting simply makes sense operationally.

How This Strategy Supports a Smooth January Implementation

Prepaying doesn’t just affect finances — it directly affects execution.

When firms prepay and plan ahead, they are able to:

• Schedule onboarding and training before January
• Assign a champion and evaluators with clear expectations
• Pilot real cases immediately
• Roll the workflow out firm-wide without hesitation
• Avoid internal debates about “who gets moved first”

This is exactly the kind of structured rollout described in Article #4, and it’s one of the reasons those implementations succeed.

Why Transparent Pricing Matters During Evaluation

One frustration I hear frequently during a search for business software is this:

“We can’t even tell if this solution fits our budget.”

Many software providers hide pricing behind demos, sales calls, or proposals. That makes it difficult to plan, compare options, or make timely decisions — especially at year-end.

That’s why we publish our pricing openly.
If you’re evaluating whether DivorceHelp123 fits your firm’s needs and budget, you can review our pricing at any time — without a demo or sales call.

👉 View DivorceHelp123’s visible pricing

How DivorceHelp123 Pricing Is Structured

At DivorceHelp123, we structure pricing so the cost is shared by the parties who receive the most value from the platform.

Law firms pay a modest monthly subscription fee, based on the number of firm users who access the system.

Clients are active users in the workflow, and each matter is supported by a one-time Client Matter fee, which covers unlimited use of the platform for the duration of that case. Firms typically prepay for Client Matters and pass the cost through to clients as part of a technology setup fee or on the client’s first statement.

Importantly, the Client Matter fee is less than the cost of one hour of a legal professional’s time. Clients often recoup far more than that amount by avoiding billable time spent on manual data transcription, repeated follow-ups, and the creation of complex Excel-based asset distribution reports.

For firms that offer flat-fee services, this structure can be especially impactful. Streamlining data collection, financial statements, and scenario generation significantly reduces internal labor, allowing firms to improve margins while delivering a better client experience.

Putting It All Together

At the end of the year, the goal isn’t just to spend money — it’s to make thoughtful decisions that set your firm up for success.

For many family law firms, prepaying for workflow capacity:

• Aligns budgeting with real operational needs
• Supports a clean, firm-wide implementation
• Reduces friction during onboarding
• Helps teams start the year more organized and confident

Combined with the workflow audit, tool evaluation, and implementation plan covered earlier in this series, this strategy helps firms move into the new year with intention — not inertia.

What’s Next

In a few days, I’ll send a final recap with a link to one page where you can find all five guides in the Year-End Family Law Workflow Series in one place.

My hope is that these resources help you build a smoother, more efficient workflow — for your team and for the clients you serve.