Dan Bowman

Efficiently managing recurring expenses is essential for the financial success of any law firm. From rent and utilities to software subscriptions and salaries, these expenses can significantly impact the firm’s bottom line. 

In this blog, we will explore strategies to identify, evaluate, and reduce recurring expenses, leverage technology for streamlined management, establish budgets and controls, and ensure compliance. 

By implementing these tips and strategies, you can optimize your firm’s financial practices and focus on growth and success in the competitive legal industry.

What Types of Expenses Do Law Firms Have?

Typical law firm expenses can vary by the size of the firm and the practice areas, but they generally include:

• Office space, rent, and utilities
• Staff salaries and benefits
• Office supplies and technology expenses
• Third-party professional services, such as accountants or marketing agencies
• Business travel and expenses
• Professional memberships
• Insurance
• Continuing education

Recurring vs. Non-Recurring Expenses

Law firm expenses, like other business expenses, can be recurring and non-recurring. Recurring expenses are the repeating costs that arise from routine business practices, often on a predictable schedule. Recurring expenses include office supplies, a mortgage or lease on office space, staff compensation, marketing expenses, office maintenance, subscriptions for legal technology, and utility bills.

Non-recurring expenses are costs that aren’t part of the schedule or everyday business activities. They may be one-off or exceptional costs, such as investment in computers and other technology devices, real estate purchases, severance pay, or repair costs following an accident or natural disaster.

Common Challenges Law Firms Have with Tracking Recurring Expenses

There are many challenges that law firms may face when tracking recurring expenses, including:

Manual Methods

Many law firms still rely on manual methods to track expenses like spreadsheets or paper ledgers. This is not only time-consuming, but it creates opportunities for errors that can have financial repercussions.

Subscriptions

Law firms usually have subscriptions for professional services, legal publications, research databases, professional organizations, and legal software. When all of these subscriptions are on different cycles with different due dates, it can complicate expense management.

Client Expenses

Law firms may incur costs on behalf of clients called hard costs. These costs typically include travel expenses or court filing fees. Tracking these expenses can be challenging to differentiate because some hard costs are absorbed by the firm or billed to the client.

Varying Payment Methods

All the recurring costs for a law firm may have different payment methods, including ACH transfers, checks, credit cards, and other electronic payment platforms. Keeping track of all of these payment methods can be difficult alongside other expenses.

Importance of a Defined Law Firm Budget

Your firm’s budget assists in managing your cash flow by allowing you to predict your income and expenses, which helps you identify any surpluses or shortfalls in your cash flow. This allows you to plan accordingly and take advantage of investment opportunities. 

Moreover, a defined law firm budget serves as a framework to assess your financial status and the impact of significant changes, investments, or expansions. By comparing your actual financial state to your budget, you can make more informed business decisions. 

Tips to Track and Manage Legal Recurring Expenses

Ready to take control of your legal recurring expenses? Here’s how:

Use Legal Technology

Expense tracking software makes it easy for firms to track expenses in real time, store invoices and receipts, and generate expense reports. Solutions, like Bill4Time, can streamline your expense tracking to reduce errors, save time, and provide a comprehensive view of your firm’s financial standing.

Implement a Centralized System

Legal technology provides a centralized system for a single source of truth for your expense tracking. Even though your bills will be to different providers with different cycles and due dates, you can manage it all in one place.

Categorize Your Expenses

With both recurring and non-recurring expenses, you need to stay organized to stay on top of your obligations and evaluate your spending patterns. Categorizing expenses ensure nothing falls through the cracks and is allocated properly. 

Use Reports

With comprehensive reporting, you can analyze your firm’s financial performance and identify trends to achieve success. You can view expenses on their own or include them in your full financial picture to make informed business decisions.

Embrace Law Firm Billing Software

Managing recurring expenses can be challenging when different payment allocations come into play. With tools like law firm billing software, your firm can manage expenses, stay on top of your cash flow, and prepare for the ebbs and flows of your business.

Many law firms rely on the traditional billable hour for legal services, but there’s a growing trend for law firms to adopt value billing. More than just an alternative fee structure, value billing offers clear expectations, better client experiences, and fees for legal services that offer true value for both the client and the lawyer.

Continue reading to learn more about what value billing is, how it can benefit your firm and clients, and how to go about implementing it.

What Is Value Billing?

Value-based billing is a pricing model that’s based on the perceived value of your legal services and a successful outcome. Value is subjective, so coming up with a perceived value relies on collaboration and research.

Unlike traditional pricing models for law firms that include an hourly fee and billable hours that are invoiced, value-based billing is considered an alternative fee arrangement. Instead of tracking the number of hours performed on case-related work, the fees align with the output or outcome of a case, such as creating deliverables like contracts.

Benefits of Value Billing

Value billing offers many benefits, including:

Increased Client Satisfaction and Loyalty

The value-first pricing model ensures the best possible value for the client, which is a factor in referrals, reviews, and an influx of new clients from word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s a more client-centric approach to legal services and gives them a clear expectation for what they’ll pay, which reduces anxiety about obtaining and affording legal services.

Improved Profitability and Revenue Generation

The value-first pricing model improves profitability and revenue directly and indirectly. First, it ensures that you’re charging what you’re worth based on the value you provide for your clients, rather than the hours you spend on a case. Indirectly, value billing increases client satisfaction, facilitating referrals and new business that will keep your firm profitable in the long term.

Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity

Lawyers spend a lot of time on non-billable business tasks, including tracking, data entry, and billing for those billable hours. The rest of the time, they’re working but not earning direct revenue — even if the process is streamlined with time tracking software.

Value-based pricing can take time to set up initially as you analyze how to quantify the value your firm brings. Once the fees are determined, it eliminates a lot of the time spent on tracking time. Your firm becomes more efficient and productive with a lesser burden of administrative tasks.

Opportunities for Alternative Fee Arrangements

Value billing offers a lot of opportunities for alternative fee arrangements, such as flat-fee pricing for legal services, contingency pricing, retainers, subscriptions, and sliding-scale pricing. Each of these pricing models are suitable for different practice areas and offers benefits for both the client and the lawyer.

For example, flat fees are simple and predictable for certain cases, such as a no-fault divorce or drafting a will. Contingency, which is popular among personal injury attorneys, is a good option for cases that include a payout for a positive outcome.

Enhanced Focus on Client Outcomes and Results

With value pricing, you’re focused more on getting a favorable outcome than the time you spend on a case. Your pricing depends on your performance and the value you provide to your client, making the entire experience more positive overall.

Steps to Adopt Value Billing

If you want to adopt value billing at your firm, here are the steps:

Assess Your Firm’s Practice Areas and Client Base

To implement value-based pricing, you need to have an understanding of the client base, the commonality of work in the practice area, local competition, and the complexity involved.

Identify Suitable Cases or Matters for Value-Based Billing

Value-based billing is more appropriate for some cases than others. For example, simple and straightforward casework like completing a will and estate, reviewing and creating contracts, or drafting immigration applications.

Establish Clear Pricing Structures and Fee Arrangements

Communicating clearly with the client is important with any fee structure, but more so with value-based pricing. The ABA recommends offering tiered levels of service that vary in price to give clients options for perceived value and affordability. This also allows you to gauge price sensitivity for future pricing.

Collaborate with Clients to Define Values and Outcomes

Perceived value relies as much on how much you expect for your services as much as what the client expects to receive in return. You can talk with clients to understand their goals and motivations for seeking legal help, which in turn informs the value of your services, but it’s good to use industry benchmarks as well.

Implement Effective Tracking and Reporting Mechanisms

With Bill4Time, it’s easy to outline your tracking and billing processes with detailed invoices and statements that include payment terms, flat rates, or discounts. Whether you use value pricing across the board or for certain matters, you can customize your rates for each client to simplify the process. You can also track expenses and evaluate your firm’s performance with detailed financial reports.

Common Challenges with Value Billing

Though there are benefits to value billing, it can be difficult to determine exactly how much a client may value your services in monetary terms. It takes some calculating, benchmarking, and time to determine your pricing and expenses. There’s also the potential to undercharge your work.

With value billing, as with hourly billing, the paramount benchmark is ABA Model Rule 1.5(a). Lawyers are not permitted to charge an unreasonable fee for expenses, no matter the fee structure.

It will also take work to set up legal billing processes to adjust to a new fee structure and ensure that it’s clear and compliant. Legal software like Bill4Time simplifies your billing process with custom billing rates and structures tailored to your firm’s needs.

How to Manage Client Expectations with Value Billing

Value billing can provide transparency and satisfaction for clients, but it’s essential that you communicate your fees and services clearly. Instead of focusing on the time involved, communicate in terms of the value that you provide to your client in addressing their legal issues.

Setting up expectations from the start builds trust and transparency in the billing process. When your client receives an invoice, there will be no surprises. They understand exactly what they’re getting for their money.

In focusing on your value, it may be helpful to provide examples in the form of client feedback and testimonials to validate and promote your value-based billing. This forms social proof that gives your client confidence that they’re getting actual value for your services.

Final Thoughts on Value Billing

Legal services are all about value. Using value-based billing gives clients more predictability and transparency in paying for legal services, supporting a client-centric experience that drives word-of-mouth referrals and client acquisition. For firms, value billing is more efficient and productive, providing real value for services without compromising client experience, making it the future of billing in the legal industry.

The detail required for a law firm’s billing and collections can be time-consuming under the best conditions. This can be amplified when there is a lack of streamlined processes that can often leave an administrative burden on staff. From creating and sending invoices to chasing down clients for payments, and tracking overdue bills — the billing process can quickly become a time and monetary constraint for law firms. 

In addition, clients have more expectations around a transparent billing process and more payment options, including online payments and payment plans. Fortunately, a standardized legal billing workflow can simplify and streamline the process to save you time, keep your clients happy, and get your firm paid faster.

Find out more about legal billing workflows, their benefits, and action steps to implement them at your firm.

What Is a Legal Billing Workflow?

Legal billing workflow is a process to save your firm time and drive the collections process. With the right workflow, you can stay organized, reduce non-billable hours, and increase client satisfaction.

7 Steps to Define Your Law Firm’s Billing Workflow

Ready to bring change to your firm? Here’s how:

1. Set Up Invoice Templates

The law firm invoice template is the first step in your legal billing workflow. A legal invoice template will save time during the law firm invoicing process, and with Bill4Time customized invoices, you can send pre-bills, detailed invoices, and statements with just a click. There are many features you can set according to your needs, including percentage or flat-rate discounts, late fees, alternate currency, and payment terms.

2. Assess the Delivery of Invoices

Relying on a paper invoice process and sending them via mail, can delay the billing process and slow how fast your firm gets paid. Unless it’s a preferred method for your client, you can opt to ask your clients for approval to email invoices using a secure channel. It’s recommended to have them sign a written agreement for email invoices to avoid issues with clients saying they didn’t receive a bill.

Electronic invoices expedite the process by sending invoices instantly and eliminating the time spent on printing, folding, and placing invoices into envelopes to mail them out. You’ll also have an electronic repository with tracking for which clients paid, which haven’t, and what you need to do next.

3. Automate Time Tracking

According to the American Bar Association (ABA), the amount of time you lose if you don’t keep time is incredible. If you don’t log your time by the end of the day, you’ll likely lose 10% of your billable hours. This percentage can snowball to 25% or even 50% when you wait until the next day or the end of the week. 

Fortunately, you can find more efficient means to track time. Bill4Time’s legal time tracking features are a simple and effective way to track time without spreadsheets and notepads. Capture your time in real-time with a timer on your phone, tablet, or desktop, including billable and non-billable time for internal time, staff tracking, and more.

4. Define Billing Cutoff Dates

A hard billing due date is a great option for your workflow to ensure you’re invoicing on a consistent basis. Many firms rely on bi-weekly or monthly billing, but whichever you choose, it’s important to use a calendar or law firm billing software to schedule dates and ensure that the cutoff date is firm.

5. Accept Online Payments

Clients today want modern payment methods, including the ability to pay online using a credit or debit card. Bill4Time Payments offers a secure, convenient solution for clients to pay their invoices online with just a few clicks. There are no costly third-party services or integrations, and the platform processes the payments immediately.

With tracking and reporting, Bill4Time Payments helps you understand your firm’s cash flow and areas for improvement. It’s also 100% compliant with IOLTA, ABA, and state bar guidelines for ePayments.

6. Consider Payment Plans

More and more clients are looking for alternative payment arrangements with law firms, including payment plans. These arrangements make it easier for clients to afford the legal services they need, giving you access to a wider range of clients.

If payment plans seem challenging, they don’t have to be. Bill4Time Payments includes options for custom payment plans to improve your cash flow and reduce the risk of missed payments. You can create payment plan options with weekly or monthly installments for your firm and client’s convenience. You could also set up payment reminders to ensure your clients stay on top of their bills which we’ll discuss next.

7. Create Automatic Reminders

It’s easy for life to get in the way and payments may fall through the cracks. With automatic reminders, you can help your clients stay on track with their bills. If they fall behind, an email reminder motivates them to get that invoice paid using your secure payment portal.

Keep your emails warm but firm, and include their invoice and descriptions for their payment options, such as a link to your payment portal. The goal is to make it as seamless as possible for your clients to pay. Bill4Time makes it easy to generate and send custom payment links so clients can pay, hassle-free. 

Benefits of Automating Your Firm’s Billing Workflow

What do you get out of automating your firm’s billing workflow with law firm invoicing software? Here are the biggest benefits:

Improved Accuracy

Manual processes are time-consuming and error-prone. It’s easy for mistakes to happen with repetitive data entry, which can lead to revenue lost. Workflow automation reduces common errors with invoice templates and data populations to limit the opportunities for mistakes with data entry.

Standardized Process

Standardized processes are essential for your firm to grow manageably. Using billing workflows helps you document and streamline your firm’s processes to keep them consistent across all departments and staff. This also helps when you need to hire employees so everyone can easily step into the role.

Enhanced Client Transparency

Trust is a big part of a positive client experience, and much of that comes down to billing. The legal industry already has some concerns because of stereotypes and misconceptions, but you can develop a solid reputation by proving yourself reliable and trustworthy to your clients with clear pricing and detailed, consistent billing.

Recap

Legal billing can have challenges with the time-consuming nature of traditional billing methods and manual processes. Implementing a legal billing workflow improves your firm’s systems, builds more trust with clients, creates standardized processes, and helps you protect your firm’s cash flow.

For some clients, the upfront payment of legal fees makes accessing legal services challenging, if not impossible, and offering payment plans expands your client base while improving cash flow.

With 70% of clients wanting law firms to offer payment plans — it’s worth understanding how payment plans work, their benefits, and best practices to determine if they’re right for your firm. Continue reading to learn more about law firm payment plans and how you can implement them at your firm.

Can Lawyers Accept Payment Plans?

Law firms can accept a variety of payment methods to allow clients to access legal services they may otherwise be unable to afford. Some firms rely on specific options, such as a split payment, while others work with customized payment plans tailored to the individual client. With any type of billing or payment, law firms must adhere to ABA rules and regulations. Especially if your firm’s payment plans will be processed online. 

How to Set Up Payment Plans at Your Law Firm

With the right systems in place, setting up payment plans at your law firm is an effortless process. Here’s how:

Consider Your Billing Policy

If you already have a billing policy, you’ll need to determine how payment plans will fit into your goals. Payment plans are great for many firms and clients, but they’re only as effective as how you plan and assess them.

Here are some factors to consider:

What can your client afford to pay? Even with low recurring payments, some clients may simply be unable to afford your services. It’s important to discuss your client’s financial situation in advance.

Does the plan work for the firm? Lower payments over time can be good for cash flow, but not always. Think about your current cash flow and see if you can handle having lower, recurring payments instead of upfront payments.

These considerations can help you determine how to structure your payment plan, who should have access to it, and what stipulations to put in place. 

Form a Payment Agreement

No matter how you structure your payment plans, it’s crucial to have a payment agreement that clearly communicates the intricacies of the policy to clients. They will be expected to sign this document before they will be billed with a payment plan, and it should include all the terms.  Creating a template can help you streamline the process for your firm and clients.

Create a Communication Plan

Your payment agreement should be detailed and clear to set up proper expectations for your clients. Be sure to include any down payment you expect in advance, the payment collection schedule, the payment methods you accept, and an action plan for late payments.

For example, will you accept payments on a monthly or quarterly basis? Do they have to pay a down payment or a percentage of the total bill in advance? Do you accept online payment methods?

Assess Late Payment Terms

Another important aspect of deciding on payment plan agreements is determining, and communicating, how you will handle late payments. The clearer you can be upfront, the more likely you are to receive payments on time and minimize client disputes.

For example, is there a grace period for clients to pay after the due date? How far in advance will they receive invoices or reminders? If the client is late with payments, are there penalties or interest? If there are penalties, how much will that be?

Benefits of Payment Plans for Lawyers

Legal collections are a common issue for many firms. By setting up payment plans, you can enjoy the following benefits:

Better Access to Legal Services for Clients

If clients need, but can’t afford, your legal services, you could be missing out on a rich client base. Payment plans give you the flexibility to help clients who may not be able to afford your services otherwise while also adding to your client list.

Better Cash Flow

As mentioned before, upfront legal fees can be intimidating to some clients. While getting a lumpsum payment has its perks for your law firm, the likelihood of a client paying in full and on time may be difficult. 

By allowing clients to break up their payments into smaller amounts over time, your firm can create a steady cash flow of more affordable payments that your clients are more likely to pay you faster. This can help improve collection rates without sacrificing your firm’s revenue. 

Save Time Collecting Late Payments

If clients are struggling to pay their bills, you have to spend time chasing down payments. Offering payment plans makes it easier for clients to pay comfortably, and on a schedule, so you’re wasting less time on collection efforts.

Improved Client Experience

Offering payment plans are part of a client-centered approach that shows your firm values modern processes and understands that clients aren’t one-size fits. Clients want digital payment methods and the option to break up payments for legal services. When your firm prioritizes the client experience, you boost retention which is often more impactful to your business than a large number of one-off clients. 

Manage Your Firm’s Payment Plans with Bill4Time Payments

If you’re planning to implement payment plans at your firm, Bill4Time makes the process simple with the ability to create custom, automated payment plans with the native payment processor, Bill4Time Payments. 

Easily schedule recurring payments, send automatic reminders, and process online payments all in one convenient place. In addition, Bill4Time has built-in reporting to track payment status, monitor cash flow, and create custom reports to manage your firm’s financial health. 

Get Started with Law Firm Payment Plans

When implemented switch the right resources, you can elevate the client experience, increase the accessibility to your legal services, and improve your firm’s cash flow and collections with payment plans. With any new process, it’s important to communicate clearly with clients and staff about the terms of your payment plans, when they’re appropriate, and how they fit into your current billing policy. Leveraging technology like Bill4Time helps you streamline your legal billing with tools to support payment plans, including a built-in payment processor for online payments.

In the modern legal industry, providing exceptional service isn’t just about winning for the client. According to the American Bar Association, a big part of maintaining legal competence is understanding relevant technology.

Law firms that operate with outdated software — or worse, no legal technology — not only negatively impact the client experience but sacrifice productivity and profitability.

Whether you’re looking for new technology or considering upgrading your current technology, you’ll need to understand the basics of migrating your data. Read on to find out more about legal practice management software, how to choose the best solution for your firm, and how to make the switch.

Importance of Legal Practice Management Software

The legal industry has historically been slow to innovate, but that was upended during the COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses of all types rapidly shifted practices to continue to serve customers, law firms had to develop more modern processes to stay afloat.

The effects of the pandemic still linger three years later. Lawyers are adapting to remote work, and clients in turn desire more technologically sophisticated lawyers and digital solutions like online payments or client portals made available to them. 

How to Identify When It’s Time to Adopt New Legal Software

Wondering if it’s time to migrate to new legal software? Here are some signs:

Unmanageable Caseload

One of the biggest benefits of legal technology is its ability to automate general law firm management processes and workflows. When you have an unmanageable caseload, saving time by automating repetitive tasks, client intake, and billing and invoicing can free time to focus on complex, billable work.

Tasks Falling Through the Cracks

When you’re constantly juggling different tasks, both for the firm and your clients, it’s easy to miss a deadline or correspondence. Legal practice management software helps you track all your tasks and deadlines to ensure you don’t miss the important details when you manage your day.

Client Complaints or Dissatisfaction

According to research from Thomson Reuters, clients want knowledge sharing, timely and relevant advice, and efficient and effective service from their lawyers. These have been concerns long before legal technology, but in an increasingly connected and digital world, delivering that service is often difficult.

Digitally savvy clients care when their lawyers have legal technology since it directly affects the quality of their experience. And, if you’re missing deadlines or the client has to jump through hoops, they’re not getting the experience they want.

Limited Staff Bandwidth

There’s only so much time in a day. If your staff is struggling to complete tasks and falling behind, instead of hiring more people — and taking on more expenses — legal software helps you organize all tasks, automate mundane processes, and access information anytime, anywhere, to get more accomplished in less time.

Types of Practice Management Software

There are two types of practice management software: cloud-based and on-premise software. Cloud-based software utilizes cloud technology to allow you to access and share information from any device with an internet connection — smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. Lawyers and staff can work remotely without disrupting their processes.

On-premise software involves physical servers at the office (on-premise), which makes it challenging to support, or shift to, remote work. Lawyers and staff have to work from the office or bring documents home with them to complete their work.

How to Find the Best Legal Practice Management Software

Making the switch to legal practice management software is a great investment in your law firm, but they’re not all created equal. Here’s how you can find the best option for your law firm:

Assess Current Needs and Processes

Every member of the firm, from partners to legal secretaries, has different needs and challenges each day. Consider each staff member when reviewing your current needs and set goals for what you want to accomplish with legal technology.

Prioritize the Features That Matter

Different legal software solutions offer different features. Think about what’s most important to you when making the switch. For example, legal-specific technology will have features that are designed for the common pain points in law firms.

Other features to consider include robust cybersecurity, automation features, project management, and customization features to make the most of the technology.

For example, Bill4Time’s legal time tracking software includes not only features for timekeeping but customization for different billing structures. With legal-specific features to streamline time tracking for lawyers, Bill4Time also simplifies the billing process with automatic timers, invoice templates, built-in online payment processing, and more on one platform.  

Migrating to New Practice Management Software

Migrating to a new practice management solution may seem daunting, but a little planning and preparation ensure your migration process is simple and successful.

Assess Current Data

Your data is one of the most important aspects of your legal practice management system. For a successful migration, make sure you know your data sources and where different types of data, like client and case information, are accurately documented. 

Decide Which Data Should Be Migrated

Once you know where your data is stored and what types you have, you can decide what needs to be migrated. Along with the compliance or regulatory guidelines for storing legal records, here are some general rules:

• Migrate three years of calendar data
• Import primary client contact information
• Import all matters, closed or not
• Settle up long-term outstanding invoices
• Unbilled time and expenses that won’t be collected shouldn’t be migrated

Clean Your Data

Data migration is a good time for a “fresh start.” Don’t transfer bad data into your new system. Instead, clean your data to remove incorrect, corrupt, poorly formatted, duplicate, or incomplete data before migration.

Plan a Migration Timeline

Your legal technology provider can help you prepare and move your data from your current system to your new one. Set a preferred timeline to ensure the migration works with your schedule and limits business disruption. You should also include time to allow your staff to train and adjust to the new platform.

Ideally, this entire process should take about a week.

The Modern Legal Landscape Demands Modern Processes

Legal practice management software, like Bill4Time, supports lawyers to not only meet client demands but improve the efficiency and profitability of law firms. If your current software doesn’t serve your needs, it may be time to consider migrating to a sophisticated solution that offers modern features to support your firm and improve client satisfaction.

Project management has been essential in the corporate world for a long time, but it’s also important for any law firm looking to stay competitive.

Using skills like risk management, planning, budgeting, and resource allocation, law firm project management creates consistency for lawyers and law firm processes and ensures a positive experience for clients.

What Is Law Firm Project Management?

Law firm project management, or legal project management, is the management of processes and delivery of legal services using a defined methodology. In the legal industry, “projects” are anything a lawyer completes, including cases, matters, deals, disputes, contracts, or agreements.

By leveraging different aspects of project management from other disciplines, legal practice management provides structured work in managed stages for measurable and predictable results.

Why Is Law Firm Project Management Important?

Law firm project management arose in response to changing market demands. The legal industry may be traditional, but client expectations, market competition, and other factors are pushing law firms to become more cost-effective and proactive.

Sound, efficient processes are integral to success for firms of any size, especially as they grow and scale. Having established processes in place means that projects and their results are consistent for an elevated client experience.

There are additional benefits, including:

• Predictability in how projects are approached, how long they will take, and how any obstacles will be addressed
• Efficient planning for lower costs and better budgets
• More client satisfaction with consistent, transparent experiences

Why Law Firms Struggle with Project Management

Even if they recognize the need for project management, many law firms struggle to put it into practice. In general, the legal industry can be largely traditional, but there are other obstacles that can hinder effective project management.

Many firms struggle with limited staff. Adding project management tasks to an already full plate stretches resources too thin, leading to errors and missed tasks. In addition, law firms may already face challenges with time management – a key component of project management.

If a law firm hasn’t embraced legal technology, these struggles are amplified. Dealing with outdated processes and time-consuming tasks – on top of tasks like planning, budgeting, resource allocation, and budgeting – can become overwhelming quickly.

Who Manages Projects for Law Firms?

Legal project managers handle planning, efficiency, and risk management for projects. They don’t necessarily have to be lawyers, but they must possess an understanding of the specifics of the industry.

There are additional skills that legal project managers should have, including:

• Leadership skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Critical and strategic thinking skills
• Technical management skills
• Analytical skills
• Business organizational skills
• Communication skills
• Legal knowledge

How to Implement a Law Firm Project Management Strategy

Effective legal project management looks different across firms, cases, matters, and internal projects, but it has these basic components:

Set a Goal

All projects need a goal, whether it’s a marketing strategy, client case, or another internal initiative. Set a goal for what you want to achieve at the end of the project and monitor your progress along the way.

Create a Timeline

Create a timeline that includes deadlines and milestones necessary to reach your goal. If the project involves different teams, include them in the projected timeline.

Allocate Tasks

Define which teams or staff are responsible for each task or step of your plan, as well as the person responsible for the final completion of the project.

Implement Technology Tools

Law firm project management tools help improve the overall productivity and efficiency of a law firm. For example, Bill4Time’s time tracking and law firm invoicing platform also provides a task management system to evaluate each team member’s workload and plan and allocate work. Having this feature built-in allows firms to get a full view of how their staff’s time is allocated and helps them make informed decisions about which areas of the business are the most profitable.

Time tracking for lawyers also helps with legal project management by keeping tasks organized and ensuring that projects are going according to schedule. You can view upcoming, overdue, and completed tasks at a glance.

Embrace Legal Project Management

Legal project management is an important aspect of running a modern law firm. But with the right processes and systems in place, plus the right legal software that can support project management, you can reap the benefits of effective project management to keep your law firm running smoothly.