Average Time to Resolve a Case KPI

Average Time to Resolve a Case is a critical KPI that reflects operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

It directly influences cash flow, resource allocation, and overall business health.

A shorter resolution time often correlates with improved customer loyalty and retention rates.

Conversely, prolonged case resolution can lead to increased operational costs and diminished trust.

Companies leveraging data-driven decision-making can enhance their case management processes, ultimately driving better business outcomes.

This KPI serves as a leading indicator for forecasting accuracy and strategic alignment within the organization.

How Average Time to Resolve a Case Connects to Your Strategy

Average Time to Resolve a Case is the top-ranked metric in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Group KPI group, holding priority 1 among the group's 50 members. As an internal-process measure sitting at the head of the order, it is the lead efficiency signal customers use to judge how quickly the function moves a matter from open to closed.

Its closest co-metrics split between speed and outcome quality. On the outcome side sit Success Rate, Percentage of Cases Won, Percentage of Cases Settled Out of Court, and Settlement Rate. On the cost and throughput side sit Average Cost of Settlement, Time to Close Cases, and Budget vs. Actual Expenses. Because it carries an internal-process perspective, this KPI behaves as a leading indicator: it moves before the financial and customer results do.

The defining tension is against Success Rate and Percentage of Cases Won. Pushing resolution time down can mean settling or conceding cases that patience would have won. The group's own guidance is to monitor resolution time alongside Success Rate precisely to catch that trade-off: a rising resolution time with flat or declining success points to process bottlenecks, while a falling resolution time paired with slipping win rates points to rushing. Read the speed metric against outcome quality, not on its own.

Measuring Average Time to Resolve a Case in Practice

For a legal function, this metric lives in the case or matter management system, not a ticketing tool. Resolution time is total time to resolve divided by the number of cases resolved, so the honesty of the number depends entirely on where you start and stop the clock.

Decide the definitional forks first:

• Clock start. Filing date, intake date, or the date a matter is assigned all produce different results. Pick one and apply it consistently.
• Clock stop. A case can end at judgment, at settlement, at dismissal, or at administrative closure. Mixing these inflates or deflates the average.
• Calendar versus working days, and how to treat periods when a matter is stayed, dormant, or awaiting a court date outside the team's control.

Segment by case type, complexity, court, and jurisdiction, because a routine dispute and a complex multi-party matter do not belong in the same pooled average. Instrumentation pitfalls to guard against: survivorship, since only resolved cases enter the calculation while long-running open matters stay invisible until they close and then jolt the trend; and long-tail skew, since a few very long cases can pull the mean well above what most matters actually experience, which is why the median is often the more honest companion.

Common Pitfalls

Many organizations underestimate the impact of unresolved cases on overall customer satisfaction and retention.

• Failing to invest in case management technology can hinder resolution speed. Outdated systems often lead to bottlenecks and miscommunication among teams, prolonging case resolution times.
• Neglecting staff training on case handling best practices results in inconsistent service quality. Employees may struggle to navigate complex cases, leading to delays and customer frustration.
• Ignoring customer feedback on case resolution processes prevents organizations from identifying pain points. Without actionable insights, systemic issues remain unaddressed, prolonging resolution times.
• Overcomplicating case resolution workflows can confuse staff and customers alike. Streamlined processes are essential for quick resolutions and maintaining customer trust.

Improvement Levers

Enhancing case resolution times requires a focus on process optimization and employee empowerment.

• Implement advanced case management software to automate routine tasks and improve tracking. Automation reduces manual errors and accelerates resolution times, leading to better customer experiences.
• Regularly conduct training sessions for staff on effective case resolution strategies. Empowered employees equipped with the right skills can handle cases more efficiently, improving overall performance.
• Establish clear communication channels for customers to report issues and track progress. Transparency builds trust and encourages prompt resolution, enhancing customer satisfaction.
• Utilize data analytics to identify bottlenecks in the case resolution process. By analyzing trends, organizations can target specific areas for improvement, driving operational efficiency.

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Average Time to Resolve a Case Benchmarks

We have 2 relevant benchmarks in our benchmarks database.

Browse the Top Benchmarked KPIs in Litigation and Dispute Resolution Group

Reading the Benchmarks for Average Time to Resolve a Case

The tracked sources for a metric of this name all measure a different domain than this page does, and that is the single most important thing to understand before borrowing any of them. Medallia, Plecto, Jitbit, and MetricNet all describe customer-support or IT-incident resolution time. Medallia frames it around customer support interactions, Plecto around customer support cases, Jitbit around support tickets, and MetricNet around IT incidents in a desktop-support and IT-service-management setting.

This page measures the time to resolve a legal case, meaning a lawsuit or dispute that can run for many months. That is a fundamentally different population and timescale from a support ticket or a help-desk incident. Applying any of these support-desk methodologies to a legal case metric is a category error, not a like-for-like comparison, and no figure from them should ever be presented as a reference point for legal resolution time.

The support sources also diverge among themselves, which is worth noting even setting the domain aside. They count different units of work: interactions, cases, tickets, and incidents are not interchangeable. They also differ on how the clock runs. MetricNet explicitly measures elapsed time in business hours from when an incident is reported until it is resolved, whereas the others do not specify business-hour versus calendar-time counting. So even a customer choosing among these support benchmarks would be comparing inconsistent definitions.

OKRs That Use Average Time to Resolve a Case

This KPI is a natural key result under the group's efficiency objective, Optimize case resolution efficiency to reduce time and cost burdens. That objective already lists reducing Average Time to Resolve a Case among its key results, alongside lowering cost per case, cutting Time to Close Cases, and decreasing time spent on case preparation.

A sound framing:

• Objective: optimize case resolution efficiency to reduce time and cost burdens.
• Key result: reduce the median time to resolve a case for routine matters, with any illustrative target set by the team's own baseline rather than an outside figure.
• Paired key result: hold or improve Success Rate over the same window, so speed gains do not come from conceding winnable cases.

Keep the reduction directional and always paired with an outcome-quality guardrail, since the objective is efficiency that preserves results, not speed for its own sake.

See OKR Examples for Litigation and Dispute Resolution Group

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