Barnes Beverage Group: From Best Estimates to Data-Driven Growth
Barnes Beverage Group serves the beverage industry exclusively: brands, manufacturers, and suppliers across the beer, wine, spirits, and alcohol categories, from early-stage startups to some of the largest manufacturers in the country.
The firm was founded by husband and wife Brandon and Shauna Barnes, both veterans of big law. One of the first things they changed was how they bill. Clients pay on a net-30 basis with invoices going out monthly; their pricing model spans hourly, flat-fee, and subscription arrangements, each designed to give clients predictability over their legal spend.
That transparency, though, depends on one thing: knowing exactly where the firm’s time is going.
Time Entries That Told Half the Story
Before Billables AI, Barnes Beverage Group had a daily time-entry policy. What it didn’t have was consistent follow-through.
About half the team had come from in-house roles at beverage companies, where detailed timekeeping simply wasn’t part of the job. Entry habits varied widely: some people logged in real time, some reconstructed at the end of the day, others caught up at the end of the week. Email was the biggest blind spot. A substantial share of the firm’s client work happens in email, and email time was consistently under-recorded.
“We knew time was falling through the cracks, but we couldn’t see exactly where. We were making decisions about pricing and capacity based on numbers that were telling us an incomplete story.” Barnes says.
The administrative weight of managing the gap fell largely on Brandon and Shauna, who also carry the firm’s primary client development responsibilities. Every hour spent chasing time entries was time not spent on clients or business development.
Right Fit, Right Away
Barnes evaluated approximately 15 timekeeping products. The search narrowed when a conversation with the team at LeanLaw, the firm’s billing platform, pointed him toward Billables AI, as a preferred integration partner. The integration between the two tools was already part of why the firm had moved to LeanLaw. Seeing what Billables AI could do made the decision straightforward.
“We had been looking for exactly this. A tool that captures activity automatically, works with the systems we already use, and doesn’t add more work for the team. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was what we needed”
Barnes Beverage Group
Roughly 70% of the team adopted Billables AI within the first few weeks. 100% adoption came soon after. For those who were slower, Billables AI gave Barnes a management tool he hadn’t anticipated: entries sitting unreviewed in the pending queue were easy to identify, which meant targeted one-on-one conversations instead of firm-wide reminders.
“Billables AI started paying for itself almost right away. Time that used to fall through the cracks was getting captured automatically, and the overhead of chasing people for entries basically disappeared,” he says.
The Data That Justified the Hires
In the first full period after Billables AI was in place, billed hours increased 24.9% year-over-year. For a firm that had been operating on incomplete data, the number told a story that the old time entries never could.
The biggest surprise was how much of the newly captured time came from email. Once Billables AI began logging email activity automatically, work that had been happening in inboxes became visible for the first time. Email became the single largest source of newly captured hours.
That visibility extended beyond billing. As non-billable hours surfaced alongside billable ones, a clearer picture of the firm’s actual workload emerged, one that told a different story than the time entries had been telling.
“We had a general sense the team was stretched, but a sense isn’t enough to make a hiring decision. Once we could see the full picture, it was clear we were running lean. That data gave us the confidence to bring on two additional attorneys”
Brandon Barnes
Practice Group Leader - Regulatory & COO
"Having the data now, it’s hard to imagine how we operated without it," he says.
The same data now underpins how the firm prices and plans. Flat-fee proposals are calibrated against real data on how similar matters have historically been scoped. Cash flow forecasting and multi-year projections, work that previously relied on experience and estimation, are now built from actual time records.
“Every decision we make about pricing, hiring, and planning starts with the numbers. When the underlying data is accurate, we can trust what it’s telling us. When it isn’t, every decision downstream is built on a shaky foundation,” he says.
As a lean boutique, Barnes Beverage Group competes for clients who are accustomed to working with large firms. The quality and consistency of their time entries matters.
“Our clients are sophisticated — many of them have managed legal relationships with major firms. Billables AI lets us produce that level of detail and professionalism without the administrative infrastructure a bigger firm would need to pull it off,” says Barnes.
Still Scratching the Surface
For Barnes, the work with Billables AI is still evolving. He’s already planning to go deeper into Billables AI’s Insights features — analytics on workload patterns, productivity, and revenue trends — once the current busy season clears. The foundation is in place. The next chapter is just beginning.
