Economic consulting firms occupy a specialized niche in professional services—advising clients on antitrust litigation, regulatory proceedings, damages calculations, market analysis, and strategic business decisions. The work is analytically intensive, requiring PhD economists, financial analysts, and industry specialists to produce research, expert reports, and testimony support under strict deadlines.
But behind every expert report is a scaffolding of administrative work: billing management, engagement coordination, client communications, and deliverable documentation. In 2026, economic consulting firms of all sizes are turning to virtual assistants to manage this scaffolding, allowing their analytical talent to focus on the work that commands premium fees.
Client Billing Administration in a Project-Based Model
Economic consulting operates primarily on project-based billing—time and materials engagements with detailed billing narratives required for submission to clients, courts, and regulatory bodies. Billing in this environment requires compiling time entries from multiple staff, applying agreed rates, preparing billing narratives that accurately describe the work performed, and coordinating partner or managing economist review before invoices are released.
For matters in active litigation, billing records may be subject to discovery or detailed client review. Accuracy, clarity, and completeness are not optional. Virtual assistants trained on the firm's billing templates and matter-specific guidelines can manage the compilation and drafting workflow, ensuring that billing narratives are thorough and consistent before they reach the reviewing economist.
The Consulting Industry Research Group's 2024 Operations Report found that billing cycle delays at professional services firms are most commonly caused by time entry compilation bottlenecks and insufficient administrative bandwidth for billing narrative preparation—both problems that VAs directly address. Firms that restructured billing administration to include dedicated support reported a 30% reduction in average days-to-invoice.
Engagement Coordination Support
Active economic consulting engagements involve coordination across multiple dimensions: scheduling depositions and expert preparation sessions, managing document production requests from legal teams, coordinating data delivery from clients, tracking deadlines in regulatory dockets, and organizing expert report drafting timelines.
Virtual assistants serve as engagement coordinators, maintaining the matter schedule, tracking outstanding deliverables, sending reminders as deadlines approach, and coordinating logistics for client meetings, expert witness preparation sessions, and trial support activities. In litigation matters, which often move at the pace of court scheduling orders, this coordination role is essential to avoiding the costly errors that come from missed deadlines.
A 2025 survey of economic consulting managing directors by the National Economic Research Association found that engagement coordination inefficiencies—specifically, the time spent by senior economists on administrative coordination that could be delegated—were cited as the leading cause of underutilization of analytical capacity. VAs recapture this capacity.
Client Communications Management
Economic consulting clients are sophisticated: law firms, investment banks, regulatory agencies, and large corporations. Their communication expectations reflect that sophistication—they expect prompt responses, clear status updates, and professional, well-organized deliverable transmittals.
Virtual assistants manage client communication workflows: preparing meeting agendas and follow-up summaries, drafting status update letters for managing economist review, coordinating document delivery and receipt confirmation, and managing scheduling for client calls and working sessions. In regulatory matters before agencies such as the FTC, DOJ, FERC, or SEC, communication timelines are often dictated by procedural schedules; VAs help ensure the firm never misses a client communication deadline tied to a regulatory milestone.
For business development communications—proposal preparation, conference participation, client event coordination—VAs provide support that keeps the firm's external profile active without drawing economist time away from billable matters.
Deliverable Documentation Management
Expert reports, white papers, data analyses, and litigation support deliverables must be produced, reviewed, formatted, filed, and archived according to strict quality and procedural standards. Managing the documentation lifecycle of these deliverables—version control, format compliance, filing confirmation, and archive organization—is an administrative function with significant quality implications.
Virtual assistants support deliverable management by maintaining document libraries, tracking version histories, coordinating final formatting and proofreading support, managing filing logistics for court-submitted documents, and organizing project archives upon matter close. In expert report submissions, where the court requires specific formatting and exhibit numbering conventions, VA-managed document preparation reduces the risk of submission deficiencies.
American Bar Foundation research from 2024 found that expert report formatting deficiencies were among the most common procedural issues raised by opposing counsel in federal civil litigation—often because the analytical team that produced the report lacked dedicated administrative support for the submission process.
Economic consulting firms looking to improve billing throughput, matter coordination efficiency, and client communication quality can explore VA solutions at Stealth Agents.
Sources
- Consulting Industry Research Group, "Professional Services Operations and Billing Efficiency Report," 2024
- National Economic Research Association, "Managing Director Survey: Analytical Capacity and Administrative Efficiency," 2025
- American Bar Foundation, "Expert Witness Process and Procedural Quality Study," 2024