How a HoneyBook Setup Saved a Busy Attorney From Lost Revenue and Endless Admin [Case Study]

Client:  Amber Gilormo, Attorney & Founder of The Boutique Lawyer, a law firm and legal template shop helping small businesses build and scale from a solid legal foundation.

Service Provided: HoneyBook Full Setup — Done for 6 Offers including process mapping, smart files, email templates, automations, schedulers, a branded client portal, a recorded walkthrough, training videos, and 30 days of Slack support.

Date of service: October 20, 2025-November 26, 2025 (+Support period of 30 days)

Without automated billing software, manually running every part of her client process was costing thousands of dollars every month.

Amber Gilormo’s been practising law for 16 years, running two law firms. In the online business space though, she’s known as the founder of The Boutique Lawyer, a law firm and template shop she founded in 2020, helping small businesses build a solid legal foundation across all stages of growth.

From an operational standpoint though, she had multiple offers serving different clients at different price points. As her own business grew, so did her pile of tasks related to admin, onboarding, client experience, and offboarding.

She was onboarding clients through an old-school legal case management system built for internal tracking — not client experience.

Proposals were sent via email, contracts were sent via e-sign, and she’d have to go manually create every single invoice every month for every client. They also had no clear place to view their files and kept asking where things were. 

“My onboarding process took absolutely forever because I’d send an old school email, type it out, and it would take probably 10-15 minutes.”

As a busy mom of five, running two law firms, all this time being consumed by admin became a real problem as Amber’s business grew. 

Invoices weren’t being sent, and she was losing revenue she’d already earned.

Manually having to send invoices every month meant Amber needed a lot of reminders. It would take at least 15 minutes to set up the information for each new client and she’d have to set herself a calendar reminder to send them their monthly invoice. 

The problem? She was getting too busy to even send the reminder email. 

“I kid you not — I’d see the thing pop up on my calendar, ‘you need to send so and so their fourth invoice,’ the day would go by, and I wouldn’t do it. 

Sometimes I missed it two months before I sent a person their invoice.”

What she needed was automated invoices — not calendar reminders she didn’t have time to action. This billing issue alone was enough to push her to make a change.

Amber had been weighing HoneyBook against Dubsado for a while.

She’d even had a Dubsado account previously and never touched it because she couldn’t figure it out. 

HoneyBook felt more approachable. With the clients she serves — online entrepreneurs — who were already familiar with it. Plus, the client portal had that level of polish they expected from their service providers.

But she also knew setting it up for six of her services wasn’t something she had the time for. So, she found me, through a trusted referral from a copywriter she’d worked with for years, after noticing my interactions as Honeybook Pro over on Threads. 

“I didn’t consider anyone else. The people she had worked with in the past were people that I knew and trusted, so I decided to go with her. 

Another reason was that she seemed to have direct connections with Honeybook. Someone on Threads had posted about something being broken on their account and Karly responded with, ‘Oh, it’s fixed now.’”

One of the advantages of working with a HoneyBook Pro is not just their knowledge of the platform, but the network they are connected to. They have direct access to a private Slack workspace that includes members of the HoneyBook team, other Pros, and many of the people involved in building and supporting the platform. 

That means I know exactly where to turn to get answers quickly and keep things moving.

Amber reached out just before Thanksgiving, so she could head into the new year with a new system all set up for each of her services and membership. 

More importantly, not have to spend another minute on manual billing in 2026.

THE PROCESS: “Karly is type A in the best way — always on top of everything, always on time, and every deliverable is exactly what she says you will get.”

The Honeybook Full Setup covers everything from when your client first inquires to even after they offboard. 

For Amber, that meant building out six service offers — from her $397/month membership counsel all the way up to her $12,000 Chief Legal Officer week — each with its own workflow, smart files, automations, email templates, and scheduler.

Built in three weeks, here’s how the process worked:

ONBOARDING AND PROCESS MAPPING.

In the onboarding questionnaire, Amber filled out her current processes for when a lead inquired, booking process, onboarding process, implementation process, offboarding process for each client, along with branding and copy assets. 

“It was very well explained. What was required, what I needed to do —  that part was easy, no surprises.”

The reason we do this is so that when we hop into the next step, i.e., the process mapping call. 

Your setup doesn’t happen without first mapping out the entire client experience — with improvements for every single one of Amber’s offers, so everything followed a clear flow and purpose. 

Amber did know it was a lot of work for the number of offers she had — because you do have to provide everything upfront for proposal copy, emails (that she’d been copy-pasting), contracts, and welcome guide.

“But the good thing is that it really makes you button up your process, so you end up with something that’s really seamless. Especially if you were doing it the old manual way like I was.”

Once that was done, and I’d received the copy and branding assets needed to build and design each part of the setup, it was go-time. 

AMBER’S HONEYBOOK BUILD, COMPLETED IN 3 WEEKS

Here’s everything I built in those three weeks, inside HoneyBook for all six of her offers:

1. Contact and lead form so inquiries funnel straight into her pipeline
2. Custom-designed proposal, contract, and welcome guide
3. Automated email sequences so nothing gets manually typed or copy-pasted
4. Set up schedulers to kill the back and forth on booking
5. Recurring billing for her membership so invoices send themselves
6. Automated invoice reminders so those invoices get paid out. 
7. Branded client portal so her clients always know where to find their files

Something that used to take hours for Amber was designed to be beautiful, professional, and automated. 

“A ton of my clients come from social media and they expect a certain level of polish.

My proposal was in an email. But now, Karly made my proposals, which I was putting in a word doc, look beautiful in HoneyBook, which is awesome because it really helps the overall client experience.”

A SUPPORT PERIOD THAT MAKES AMBER & HER TEAM CONFIDENT

1. Starting with a walkthrough call of her Honeybook.

Once the build for all six offers was completed 3 weeks later, I walked Amber through every automation and smart file on a call (recorded), so she understood exactly every single part of her setup, how it worked, and how she and her team could take over and do it themselves.

2. 30 days of Slack support.

It’s understandable when you’re trying to learn a new setup, while continuing to run your business and personal life as is, it can be challenging. Which is why Amber (and all of my setup clients) receive 30 days of Slack support so you can ask me questions anytime. 

But she also has forever access to a library of training videos I built out and sent once the walkthrough video was done. 

3. An additional 30-minute support call 

At the halfway point of the support call, once Amber had a run of her own around the setup, she booked her final 30-minute support video call to make sure she knew everything she needed to know about Honeybook.

“Karly’s been really kind — if it’s not something that requires her to go in and do stuff, she’ll point something out to me or correct me on something I wasn’t totally clear on.

She also gives a ton of support materials that’s been really helpful for my OBM to reference.”

THE RESULTS: Amber did a soft launch for her new offers — 18 inquiries and 9 discovery calls booked immediately.

THE CONFIDENCE TO ACTUALLY PROMOTE HER SERVICES.

Before the setup, Amber had never run a campaign or promotion for her legal services. The admin alone made it feel impossible — not wanting to deal with the hassle of sending proposals, invoices, and contracts individually.

After the setup, she ran her first one.

“Even though the system was brand new to me, I felt really confident in launching a sale. It was my first time doing this and it was really successful.

I knew I have this system in place that can easily handle the stuff that prevented me from doing it in the past. ”

The result: 18 inquiries and 9 discovery calls booked within days of the setup being complete.

INCREDIBLE CLIENT EXPERIENCE AT THE CLICK OF A BUTTON.

About 70% of Amber’s clients open the proposal, sign the contract, and pay their invoice the first time they access their portal. The rest get automatic follow-up reminders — no manual chasing required.

“I can go in and do my actual lawyer work instead of having to do a ton of administrative work.

It’s all literally a click of a button and moves the lead along the process. Everybody has said it’s super easy and the flow is awesome. It works very well.”

MOMENTUM THAT WORKS WITHOUT AMBER’S DIRECT INVOLVEMENT. 

The client experience is important to keep track of, even in the little things, like when a lead forgets to pay. 

It happens sometimes, where a lead signs the contract and then tries to grab their wallet and forgets about it. But with the way I set up the email reminders for each of Amber’s services ensured minimal chance of that happening.

Amber also noticed something she hadn’t expected: the portal gives her a read on clients before the work even begins.

“You get to see almost a taste of what your client is like by how long they forget to pay something or if they want changes. It gives you an idea of who you’ll be working with a little bit better than just a discovery call.”

AUTOMATED INVOICES AND RECURRING BILLING — WITHOUT NEEDING TO REMEMBER.

The recurring billing feature was by far the single biggest shift for Amber’s business.

“The recurring billing feature has been the most helpful since my setup with Honeybook. 

I’ve launched a subscription service and having that totally automated to bill each month and not have to calendar and remember is the best thing ever.”

No more missed invoices or calendar reminders that got ignored. And certainly, no more chasing down payments weeks after they were due.

“I don’t miss billing anymore. It all just runs without me having to do it, which is wonderful. 

I was falling behind on invoices, and when something like that is left undone, it sits on the back of your head. “

For a law firm managing multiple offers and retainer clients, automated billing software doesn’t just save time — it protects revenue you’ve already earned.

This case study was built on a conversation with this specific client, going through our work together. Anything in quotes is a word-for-word statement said by the client on a recorded call or in feedback.

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Your business growing is a good thing. But are you ready for the admin that comes with it?

If you’re spending hours manually sending invoices, contracts, and follow-ups every single week, it’s time for a better system. 

A full HoneyBook setup means everything is built out for you — your lead forms, automations, billing, schedulers, client portal, and email templates — so your client experience reflects your level of service. 

So that you can confidently market your services. Knowing all you have to do is focus on doing the work you’re known for, with every lead and client being managed successfully.