Dan Bowman

Lawyers often struggle with time management because they want to do all they can for those they serve, but that can lead to stress and feeling overwhelmed. Giving everything to your clients is an excellent quality, but you’re not helping them or yourself if you don’t manage your time effectively.

Stay on track this year and beyond with these time management tips for lawyers.

Common Lawyer Time Management Issues 

Why is time management difficult for lawyers? Here are a few reasons:

Overcommitment 

You may want to do all you can and continue to say “yes,” even when you don’t have the time to accomplish a task. This cycle can quickly lead to burnout and can impact the completion of other tasks and the overall quality of work or services.

Quality should always be the gold standard for lawyers, and continuous overcommitting could actually lead to more client dissatisfaction.

Inaccurate Time Estimates

It happens, you thought a task would take 30 minutes to complete and somehow it’s turned into an hour, 2 hours, and so on. While this can sometimes be inevitable, having a holistic understanding of your task list can greatly reduce inaccurate time estimates for a project. 

In these situations, it’s always important to communicate with your staff or even the client if you feel more time is needed that originally expected to complete a task. Especially, it will impact the timeline of a case or hours billed.

Procrastination

One of the key components of effective time management is not putting work off until the last moment. Procrastination is common and it almost always stems from an underlying factor. You may not know what you should do next or you may be dreading the work ahead of you. Either way, understanding the source of your procrastination can help you combat it.

Not Delegating Tasks

Proper delegation of tasks and overcommitting go hand in hand. There are many reasons why lawyers can struggle with delegating tasks, but it’s often rooted in wanting to be in control of the task completion. While understandable, lawyers will find that they can’t do it all and need to have enough trust in their staff to complete tasks. 

While the luxury of having a large law firm that is well-staffed is not always the case for solo or small law firms, lawyers can easily outsource work to virtual assistants or freelance legal professionals.

Outdated Methods

The legal industry can be slow to innovate, leaving law firms with outdated methods of managing daily tasks. Many lawyers rely on traditional methods like timekeeping on paper and filling out forms manually, which only adds to their plate. 

Law practice management software can greatly reduce how much time lawyers spend on administrative tasks by automating them.  For items like time tracking and invoicing, Bill4Time offers multiple timers that accurately capture time no matter what case you’re working on. You can then easily populate your billable time in an invoice template and bill the client. This seamless process can save lawyers hours a week. 

How to Improve Lawyer Time Management

Some simple time management tips can help you balance your workload while taking the time to enjoy the holiday season.

Understand the 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is the efficiency principle – a concept based on the idea that 20% of actions are responsible for 80% of the rules. Though this applies to virtually all industries, in the legal industry, lawyers only spend about 28% of their time on billable tasks and projects.

The key to mastering the 80/20 rule and improving time management is paying attention to the time spent on billable tasks. Your billable work should be a top priority every day, then you can focus on everything else once that’s complete.

Time Tasks Appropriately and Add a Buffer

Though you may not like the idea of timing everything throughout the day, it’s a solid strategy for identifying how you spend your time and taking your efficiency to the next level. Log the time you spend on everything for a full week, specifically administrative tasks. 

With everything in black and white, you may notice that you spend more time doing certain tasks each day than you realize. This is an opportunity to identify areas of improvement to save time without harming your productivity.

Manage Email Carefully

Email is important for keeping up with casework and client communications, but it can be a time trap. Your email inbox can get cluttered with a lot of urgent, non-urgent, and promotional messages that pile up. If you’re checking it every few minutes and answering each individual email, you’ll blow through a lot of time each day. 

Modify your notifications to avoid alerts going off for each message, then block off time on your calendar each day to manage your email. This will be the time to check and respond to all appropriate emails and keep up with your clients, so before that time hits, avoid checking your inbox.

Delegate Effectively 

Time management isn’t just about being efficient with your own workload, but saving time by helping others manage their own. You don’t want to be stuck with the burden of the workload alone, especially with a team of support staff to chip in and help.

Delegation can be challenging, but not impossible. Good project management requires you to determine who is most qualified to complete different tasks and assignments, then let them assist you to improve your productivity while getting the results you want.

Law Practice Management Tools to Support Lawyer Time Management

Law practice management software like Bill4Time has a variety of tools to shave valuable time off your workday, such as organization and time tracking tools.

• Project management features help you manage your caseload
• Time tracking tools ensure you’re keeping up with every billable minute, complete with automated timers
• Custom features allow you to separate time and expenses, add notes or documents, and set personalized notifications to manage the high-priority tasks

Master Lawyer Time Management with Time-Tracking Software

Time management is a key competency for lawyers at every stage in their careers. Small steps may only save a few minutes, but those quickly add up to improved efficiency. Including time-tracking software is the ideal complement to your time management with automated tools that help you streamline your process and stay on track.

The holidays are right around the corner. If you’ve fallen behind on your holiday shopping for your legal colleagues or law firm staff, you’re in luck! Whether you forgot you’re participating in the office white elephant or need to check off the last colleague on your list, we’ve compiled a quick list of the top recommendations for last-minute gifts for lawyers.

1. Newestor Refillable Leather Journal Notebook

Practical gifts are always a good choice for a lawyer or fresh law school graduate. This refillable leather journal from Newestor is a great gift that will last for ages, thanks to the option to refill the pages. Lawyers always need to take notes for cases and clients, and this keeps them all in one place.

2. Kosdeg Hammered Copper Water Bottle

A fancy water bottle is a better choice than a plastic bottle or reusable water bottle for athletes. With upscale hammered copper, this reusable water bottle has a professional aesthetic that a lawyer can proudly keep on their desk or on the go throughout the workday.

3. LAWSUIT! Board game

If you prefer gifts with some humor, the LAWSUIT! board game presents whimsical legal scenarios and choices legal professionals make every day, such as pursuing a settlement, accepting a verdict, or opening a solo practice. If the lawyer has kids, LAWSUIT! is appropriate for kids as young as 8 years old, offering an introduction to how the justice system works.

4. Apple AirPods Pro

Apple AirPods Pro offers a wireless in-ear speaker/microphone with features like transparency mode to let outside noise in, noise cancellation, wireless charging, audio sharing, and voice commands through Siri. These are not only helpful for your lawyer to focus on, but you can personalize them with a name, initials, or phone number.

5. Justice Baseball

The Justice Baseball is a collectible baseball that’s perfect for a lawyer, law student, or judge as unique office decor. The baseball has a picture of the scales of justice on one side and the quote, “Justice, justice, thou shalt pursue” across the other side. Both images are superimposed on a painted version of the Declaration of Independence.

6. Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals

Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals is a classic cookbook for busy professionals like lawyers. Featuring Jamie Oliver’s signature style, the cookbook offers simple recipes with globally inspired recipes to make sure a busy lawyer has quick, healthy meals to throw together during a busy week.

7. My Cousin Vinny

My Cousin Vinny is a classic courtroom comedy featuring Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei in iconic roles that are still quoted decades later. Whether your favorite lawyer has seen the movie or not, it’s an excellent nod to the legal profession.

Outlook on Lawyer Gifting

The holidays may be around the corner, but there’s still time. This list has quirky, collectible, practical, and humorous gifts to ensure you have the perfect present for your legal colleagues will use this season and beyond!

Many law firms struggle to get their invoices paid on time (about 59%). There are several situations that prevent a client from paying their invoice, ultimately leaving the firm to chase down bills or send an account to collections, a process that would rather be avoided by all parties involved.

In some cases, law firms can create roadblocks for clients in the billing process that contribute to late payments. Creating an efficient invoice reminder process can help you streamline your law firm billings and collections to get your clients to pay on time and remove the hassle from the billing process.

Why Send Invoice Reminders?

Invoicing regularly — at least once a month — keeps clients aware of the services and fees. Along with that, sending invoice reminders lets clients know when they have an invoice due date coming up to avoid missed payments.

Best Practices for Sending Invoice Reminders

Having defined legal billing guidelines for your law firm can often mitigate any bumps in the billing process. Your billing policy should not only provide standardized processes for internal teams, but it should also outline client expectations. 

You can avoid billing disputes, reduce ethical issues, and maximize revenue capture with some improvements to your invoicing process. Here are some best practices:

Improve Timekeeping

Lawyers often rely on traditionally manual methods to track time. This method is error-prone and can lead to under or overbilling, which puts your revenue and law firm reputation at risk.

Automated timekeeping through legal billing software helps you track your time accurately and transparently to include all the billable time on your invoices.

Use Invoice Templates

Creating a legal invoice is a time-consuming process, but not when you use custom invoice templates available in legal billing software. Invoice templates include all the information you need, such as:

• Firm logo
• Firm contact information
• Date
• Invoice number
• Late payment terms
• Federal employer identification number 

Then, all you have to do is include the specific client information to produce an invoice on time and send it to your client.

Set an Invoicing Schedule

As mentioned, invoicing at least once a month is recommended to keep clients aware of your services, fees, and billing schedule. If you choose to invoice more frequently, it should still be on a consistent schedule to help clients prepare for when their bills may be due.

For reminders, send an invoice reminder a week prior to the due date. If the payment is not received, send another reminder within the following week.

Many law firms create manual calendar reminders for their invoicing schedule. Legal billing software eliminates this process with automated invoicing and invoice reminders. 

Accept Online Payments

Coupled with strategic reminders, the easiest way to get paid on time is by making the payment process as quick and convenient as possible. Offering online payments with an array of payment options can reduce your accounts receivable, reduce payment delays, and increase revenue.

The more flexible and user-friendly you can make the payment options, the happier your clients will be. Legal billing software offers a secure and convenient online payment portal — free of third-party integrations. Bill4Time Payments is 100% compliant with IOLTA, ABA, and state bar guidelines for ePayments and syncs to the billing system to accept payments automatically.

Follow Up with a Thank You 

Each time you receive a payment, it’s recommended to send a follow-up “thank you” message to your clients. This helps you encourage timely payments in the future, nurture your relationships, and confirm the receipt of payment.

A follow-up message is a valuable touchpoint for client feedback. You can ask your clients to rank how likely they are to recommend your firm to a friend or family member and ask for website reviews. You can use this feedback to pivot your firm’s processes and influence your legal marketing strategies.

When Should I Send an Invoice Reminder?

It’s best to send your invoice reminder a week before the due date. This not only gives your client time to look it over and pay, but it keeps the payment fresh in their mind.

After that, the number of reminders you send will depend on your relationship with your client. If you don’t receive a payment by the due date or within the following week, it’s good to follow up with another reminder.

How to Get Clients to Pay Their Invoices on Time

Once you get the systems in place for your law firm billing, you can revamp your processes to get clients to pay their invoices on time.

It all starts with the first client interaction. Set expectations with clients upfront about your law firm’s billing process and policies. Not only will this benefit your firm in the long run, but your clients will also value the transparency and in turn, have a better experience.

Remember, hiring a lawyer may be one of the most expensive services a client pays for. Spare them unexpected expenses by setting up clear expectations for what they can expect to see on invoices, when they’ll receive them, and how they can pay.

Once an invoice is sent to the client, they should have a clear idea of what services they’re paying for. Make sure you have detailed items on your invoice with context to ensure they understand how you spent your time. This nurtures trust and reduces disputes to get your bill paid faster.

Finally, incorporating on-demand services will simplify how clients interact with your firm. Bill4Time offers online payments via custom payment links or a client portal. By enabling the client portal, clients can pay their invoices, review documents, and connect with your firm from any device. 

Get Paid with Invoice Reminders

Regular invoicing is a critical aspect of running a successful law firm. With consistent billing and payment reminders for your law firm invoices, you can decrease billing disputes, improve the client experience, and capture revenue for your firm.

The billable hour is the tried-and-true law firm billing standard for the legal industry, but new pricing models are beginning to emerge. Fixed fees are one option that’s becoming increasingly popular among law firms. With this pricing model, both the lawyer and client agree to the total cost for legal services up front, giving clients peace of mind and transparency throughout the process.

Continue reading to gain an understanding of the types of fees and pricing structure options law firms can implement. 

What Are Fixed Fees?

Fixed fees, also called flat fees, require the client to pay a predetermined fee in exchange for a specific legal service. Fixed fees are often used for straightforward, repetitive services like drafting a will, lease transactions, or EEOC responses.

Why Do Law Firms Offer Fixed Fees?

Offering fixed fees has benefits for both the client and the law firm. Hourly billing can quickly become unaffordable, but fixed fees offer transparency in the billing process and help clients feel in control of their purchasing decisions.

Having a clear understanding of the costs of legal representation also allows clients to consider the expense vs. winning or losing the case.

For the law firm, fixed fees eliminate the time spent on explaining the billing amounts, processes, and charges. Lawyers are free to focus their resources on delivering legal services instead of reviewing billing and tracking billable hours.

Types of Fee Arrangements

Billing by the hour is still a common practice in most law firms, but it doesn’t have to be. There are plenty of alternative fee arrangements, like the fixed or flat fees we’ve previously covered, that can be beneficial for different firms and clients.

Capped Fees

Capped fees use the traditional hourly billing model with an agreed-upon maximum cost or cap for the matter. This arrangement gives clients confidence and lowers their financial risk because they know that the fees won’t exceed what they can afford.

Blended Fees

Blended fees mix hourly rates with fixed fees. The firm charges one average hourly billable rate for work on a client’s case, regardless of which attorney completes the work. This averages the lower cost of an associate with the higher cost of a partner or senior partner, ensuring clients won’t have an exorbitant surprise bill because a senior partner did most of the work.

Conversely, this arrangement could mean that a client will pay higher fees for newer lawyers, which could put them at a disadvantage.

Performance Incentives

Lawyers are committed to achieving the best possible outcome for clients, though it may not always happen. Performance incentives include a predetermined reward for achieving a favorable result as additional motivation.

With this arrangement, lawyers receive an agreed-upon amount no matter the case outcome. But if they win the case and meet the predefined criteria, they may be entitled to an additional payment.

Payment Plans

Payment plans help clients access legal services who may be unable to afford them otherwise. Clients may be set up with a plan that requires smaller monthly payments until they reach the full bill amount.

These payment plans are mutually agreed upon in advance, giving the client legal representation and the firm consistent revenue over time. It’s best to have clients pay a bill in full, but well-structured payment plans are a solution that provides a better client experience.

Sliding Scale Fees

Affordability is a concern for many clients and may influence their decision to choose one firm over another — or access legal services at all. Sliding scale fees are based on a client’s ability to pay, giving them lower hourly or fixed fees that are more affordable.

Unbundled Legal Services

Some clients may struggle to pay the expenses for the full scope of legal services. Unbundled legal services address this by providing affordable legal help in a limited scope and leaving the client to handle some of the work themselves.

For example, divorce lawyers may use unbundled legal services to help the client prepare court documents.

Contingency Fees

Contingency fees are often used in complex or expensive cases, such as drug injury lawsuits or medical malpractice cases. Lawyers are paid a percentage of the client’s compensation if the case is successful.

Subscription Fees

Subscription-based fees give the client a set, recurring monthly fee for legal services, much like a subscription to an entertainment service. 

With subscription plans, clients have affordable, flat monthly fees for unlimited advice, document review, and similar services. Law firms benefit from predictable, consistent work and revenue with a strong client relationship.

Common Law Firm Payment Methods

The legal industry traditionally accepts checks and cash as payments for legal services. These may be paid in person or mailed, which creates numerous bottlenecks for the firm in collecting payment.

With this traditional payment model, law firms must bill the client, wait for the check in the mail or the in-person cash payment, and then go to the bank to deposit it. This billing process creates hurdles for the client to pay their invoice which can inadvertently increase unpaid invoices and collections.

While it’s acceptable to accept cash or check payments in some instances, clients want more efficient and convenient electronic payment methods like credit cards, debit cards, online payment systems, and even cryptocurrencies. Law firms that offer more payment methods make it easier for clients to pay, improving the client experience, and getting bills paid faster.

What is Legal Billing Software

Legal billing software allows law firms to easily manage the intricacies of their billing, invoicing, and accounting processes. The best legal billing software is built into your legal practice management platform allowing for greater insight into your billing. 

Bill4Time empowers law firms to seamlessly track time, create custom invoices, manage billing, process online payments, and generate custom expense reports in a single platform. The platform also comes with a client portal that offers a user-friendly experience for clients to easily view and pay their invoices from anywhere.

With its native online payment processing solution, Bill4Time Payments, your firm can offer clients a convenient and secure online payment portal with low transaction rates, no third-party services or integrations, and 100% compliance with IOLTA, ABA, and state bar guidelines for ePayments. You can even create custom payment links to include on your invoices so clients can complete their invoice payments in just a few clicks. 

By simply offering online payments at your law firm, you can experience a 22% decrease in accounts receivable. 

Embrace Alternative Fee Arrangements

Both law firms and clients can benefit from fixed fee arrangements or other alternative fee arrangements beyond billable hours. Law firms can provide legal services more efficiently and provide transparency into the billing process for clients. With legal billing software, you can easily offer multiple payment methods, like online payments, that can increase your law firm’s profitability while meeting the client’s needs.

Just like any business, establishing clear and ethically compliant billing practices is crucial for law firms. Your billing practices directly affect not only your bottom line but also your firm’s commitment to transparency and the client experience. Clearly communicating your legal billing guidelines goes a long way in building client trust.

But creating your firm’s billing guidelines — and enforcing them — is a challenge of its own. Still, you don’t have to wear all these hats. Legal e-billing software can give you the tools to collect legal fees and manage your firm’s finances so you can skip the guesswork. 

The Importance of Clear Legal Billing Guidelines

Whether you’re setting up your guidelines for the first time or revising existing templates and systems, keep in mind why clear billing guidelines matter. They can:

• Set expectations for your client from the outset
• Improve — or lower — client satisfaction
• Determine whether your clients pay the bill
• Impact your revenue
• Reduce the risk of malpractice claims

When you have a clear legal billing policy, your law firm will run more efficiently — and you’ll see happier clients, too. 

Client Communication

When your client gets their bill, they’re not just looking at a document. They see this as part of your firm’s communication. So, if they get a bill with charges they don’t understand or fees that seem to counter your original attorney-client agreement, they might view your firm as disorganized or untrustworthy. They could even look at those fees and think, I’m not paying for that. 

Let your clients know what to expect from the start. They should know all the relevant details about your legal fees, the billing process, and who bears responsibility for each legal expense involved. When you’re transparent about fees, your clients are less likely to get frustrated by their bills — and more likely to appreciate your firm for delivering a smooth, efficient legal process.

Ethics of Legal Billing for Law Firms 

Attorneys know that billing practices can have legal implications for their firms. Establishing a clear billing policy also ensures that you’re ethically compliant with American Bar Association (ABA) codes, like reducing the likelihood of double billing. In some states, double billing is illegal.

And you can also reduce your risk of legal malpractice claims when you have billing guidelines in place. When your clients understand what services you’ll render and at what cost, there’s less confusion regarding whether you delivered on your agreement. 

What Should Be Included in My Firm’s Legal Billing Guidelines?

Your legal billing guidelines help ensure that the client and everyone in your firm is on the same page about all things related to payment. Include these items in your guidelines:

Explain the Purpose of the Document

Educate the client about what billing guidelines are for, delineating which financial responsibilities fall on the firm and the client. The client should also understand how your billing policy fulfills your attorney-client agreement. 

Responsible Parties

Be sure to determine who is responsible for payment. Clarify when and if the law firm will cover certain expenses and when the client bears that responsibility. 

Legal Billing and Invoicing Processes

If you charge at an hourly rate, explain what that means (e.g., by what increments, when hourly fees apply). If you work on contingency, tell them about your percentage rate and if other fees apply. The same goes for retainers and any other fees you charge. 

Make sure clients understand how they’ll receive their invoices. For instance, explain how to access an e-billing platform if you use one. 

Within your practice, be sure that your own firm has a process for billing and invoicing, such as when certain attorneys should review the invoice.

Timeline of Billing

Be sure to detail when your clients will be billed and how often. Ensure that clients have a consistent billing experience. 

Signature

Get a signature from your client to confirm their understanding of your fees and billing structure. Again, this can help protect your firm against claims of malpractice or other legal concerns. It will also help you enforce payment collection as detailed in the document. 

Legal Billing Guidelines Best Practices 

Lawyers may see billing as cumbersome and tedious, but it’s foundational to your business and your relationship with your clients. To make billing simpler, try implementing these few best practices to communicate and enforce your guidelines. 

Strategies to Communicate Effectively and Enforce Billing Guidelines

Your communication with your clients impacts the relationship — and their satisfaction with your legal services. When communicating about payments:

• Set expectations early. It bears repeating: Be clear about your legal billing guidelines as soon as you establish a working relationship with the client. 
• Send invoices on a consistent schedule. Stick to your terms in the billing timeline. 
• Clarify invoice questions — and don’t bill for it. You may need to take a few minutes to help clients understand their bills. Answer their questions without fees attached.
• Send courteous reminders. Remind clients when they have an invoice and a payment deadline on the horizon.

Keep legal and finance aligned. Ensure that your attorneys and your accounting team are on the same page. This way, you can help reduce errors during the billing and invoicing process and ensure you get paid faster.

What Is Legal Billing Software for Law Firms? 

With everything that goes into establishing billing practices and enforcing payments, law firms have a lot to manage on the business side. One of the best ways to streamline your billing process is to automate it electronically with software tools. 

Overview of Legal Billing Software

Legal billing software simplifies how you invoice, bill, and organize documents for your payments. It can even help you increase your revenue by more efficiently tracking your time, making sure clients receive invoices promptly, and eliminating billing bottlenecks that prevent your firm from turning invoices into revenue.

This can be executed through cloud-based programs or software on your firm’s computers. You can even integrate outside accounting tools, such as Quickbooks so that you adopt the solution that fits best with your firm’s current systems.  

Best Legal Billing Software 

When you start to think about introducing legal e-billing software to your practice, think about what your firm needs from the tool. Identify your billing bottlenecks, and look for software that helps you address them. Then, make sure that the software offers the features and benefits you need. 

Features and Functionality Firms Should Look For

Every legal billing platform is different, but make sure that you search for solutions that offer a few essential features, like:

• Document management and invoicing. You can create all the documents you need with good legal billing software. Depending on the product’s features, you can make branded invoice templates and check the bill’s status. You can also track your receipts and expenses to better manage your firm’s spend.  
• Online payment processing (and custom links). When clients have an easier way to pay and the option to use a credit card, they may be more likely to pay promptly. The best legal billing software includes features like client portals, which give your clients a digital place to review invoices and ePay. 
• Reporting. With all your invoices and expenses organized in one platform, you can get readily-accessible insights into your firm’s financials. You can review your payment history, productivity, and expenses, among other reports.   
• Legal CRM. Some legal billing software also offers a customer management system to help you keep track of your client profiles, communications, and more. 

Benefits

With legal billing software, rest assured that your time gets tracked, your clients get their bills, and your firm is getting paid promptly. But the benefits go beyond pure financials. Consider other ways legal billing tools can help your firm:

• Improved productivity 
• Better in-house collaboration
• Optimized onboarding for new staff
• More satisfied clients

After all, the more streamlined your systems, the better for everyone who touches billing and invoicing in your firm. New staff will be better positioned to hit the ground running, and your customers will be happier to have the clarity and ease of digital payments. 

Does My Law Firm Need Legal Billing Software?

Bringing in new software tools for your practice is a big investment. Think about a couple of key factors to decide if your firm should invest. 

• Internally: How much of your staff’s time and resources are dedicated to billing? And do you have an ongoing issue with unpaid invoices? Run reports if you’re not sure. If you’re seeing rates of 15 or 20% unpaid invoices, you might want help with optimizing your process. 
• Externally: Do your clients express confusion about their bills? Do they often ask for credit card payment or digital payment capability?

If the answer to most of these questions is yes, you may want to consider bringing in the billing software. Whether you’re a small or large law firm, you may not even realize just how much revenue you stand to capture by automating your payment systems. 

How Software Can Support Your Firm’s Legal Billing Guidelines 

Ultimately, using legal e-billing tools can help you pair your billing guidelines with the enforcement side. With an easy-to-use system to send and track invoices, you can ensure that your clients uphold their end of your fee agreement. 

Because you can automate your billing and easily set payment deadlines, you can also help eliminate human error from the process. 

Implement Legal Billing Guidelines at Your Law Firm

Legal billing guidelines exist to help protect law firms and clients. They’re an essential tool that allows you to fulfill both sides of the attorney-client agreement. Plus, with billing policies in place, you can help your firm capture a significant number of payments that may have come too late or slipped through the cracks. And these guidelines also help your clients know what to expect—both from your firm and on their own end financially. More transparency for your clients means happier clients.

Bill4Time gives you the simple billing software your practice needs, complete with powerful features that allow you to track your hours, design branded invoices, collect ePayments, run reports on payment history, and more. You can schedule a demo to see how Bill4Time can optimize your legal billing process.

Throughout its history, many law firms have shied away from traditional marketing to maintain a sincere and pragmatic image. With the rise of digital marketing and increasing competition, law firms are pivoting their focus on full-scope marketing strategies to stand out. Continue reading to learn the need for law firm marketing, how to create a budget, and track your law firm’s budget with legal billing software.

The Importance of Law Firm Marketing

Law firms are, first and foremost, a business. All businesses rely on a steady flow of new clients and businesses to stay afloat, and growth is an important part of the strategy.

With this in mind, many law firms are focusing on marketing to gain a competitive edge in the market. Unlike some of the flashy, over-the-top campaigns we see in other industries, however, law firm marketing is intended to showcase how trustworthy, professional, and reliable a firm is.

It’s common for law firms to use all available avenues for digital marketing, including search engine optimization, email marketing, social media, content marketing, and search ads.

How Much Do Law Firms Usually Spend on Marketing?

The marketing budget for a law firm can differ according to its goals. But interestingly, many law firms have no budget at all, leaving marketing efforts on the back burner.

If you’re intent on setting a marketing budget, know that large law firms spend anywhere from 2% to 5% of gross revenue, while small firms spend between 5% or 10% of gross revenue, according to the American Lawyer.

The budget can vary according to many factors, however, such as location, existing branding and reputation, and practice area.

What Should My Law Firm Marketing Budget Be?

In determining your law firm budget, you should consider:

• Law firm age: Younger firms typically have higher budgets to capture market share
• Area of practice: Different practice areas have different goals and sales funnels
• Location: Highly competitive areas will require higher spend
• Current marketing efforts: Starting from scratch will require more initial marketing spending to gain traction
• Marketing strategy: The level and types of marketing campaigns may call for different investments
• Competitor budgets: Large law firms in the area can drive up the cost of marketing for all firms

You should also consider retention vs. acquisition marketing.

Retention marketing is designed to remind your former clients of your services. Generally, it costs seven times more to attract and sign a new client than retain an existing client, so retention marketing has a better ROI overall.

Acquisition marketing is designed to attract new clients. The budget should be divided between traditional and digital marketing efforts, including social media, SEO, PPC, content, and print or television ads.

Instead of working with an arbitrary budget figure, develop a customized figure based on your needs and goals.

Best Practices for Creating Law Firm Marketing Goals and Tactics

It’s important to take the time to create a detailed marketing strategy and roadmap to save time and maximize your marketing budget. With a defined plan, you can evaluate your marketing efforts to see if you’re on track to reach your goals, adjusting as needed.

Establish Marketing Goals

Your marketing goal is what you hope to achieve with your marketing efforts. Without a set goal, it’s impossible to track and measure success.

Marketing goals should always be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). This ensures that you can track and measure your efforts effectively.

For example, setting a goal to “bring in new clients” doesn’t fit the SMART goals framework. You should have specific numbers and time frames.

Some examples include:

• Gaining X clients in Q3
• Increasing firm revenue by a certain dollar amount within six months
• Increasing web traffic by the number of visitors in a month’s time

Cultivate a Brand

Branding isn’t just for retail products. Law firms have brands, too, and the right brand can attract the ideal client. Cultivating a brand is a long and involved process, but establishing consistent and powerful brand assets like the mission and vision of the firm, the firm’s brand values, and its unique value proposition are a good starting point.

Leverage Content Marketing

Content marketing is key for law firms from both a general marketing perspective and an SEO perspective. Having valuable content not only establishes a firm as a thought leader in the industry, but it helps prospective clients discover firms as they search for solutions to their legal problems online.

It’s not enough to just churn out content for the sake of it, however. You should create original, in-depth, and valuable content that addresses common questions or concerns of the target client. This may include legal blogs and articles, podcasts, video series, and infographics.

Include Video Content

Video is quickly becoming a huge trend in all of the marketing, not just for law firms. Audiences prefer video over text because it’s more engaging. Video also helps to distill complex topics into more digestible content for better retention.

There are virtually limitless options for video content for your law firm. Consider options like client testimonials, industry interviews, or Q&A series that address common questions for your practice area. Videos can be used on social media, the firm’s website, and email blasts.

Tips for Tracking Law Firm Marketing Budget and Expenses

Marketing is an investment, so your marketing budget is not a “rainy day” fund. Whatever you allocate for marketing, make sure you spend it.

Consider time and money. Spending your entire marketing budget won’t do much if you’re not putting time into your marketing strategy. You should devote at least four hours per week to marketing activities, which you can track with task management tools.

Evaluate your ROI. If you’re putting hard-earned money into marketing, you should track your progress with timekeeping and expense reporting tools to ensure the spending is worthwhile. Different marketing channels have different time frames for tracking progress, but all of your marketing efforts should be evaluated on a regular basis.

Analyzing your efforts against your set goals will determine if you’re on track to meet them or whether you should make adjustments. It will also reveal the most successful channels, so you can allocate your spending appropriately in the future.

Key Takeaways

A flow of new clients is key to growth and profitability for a law firm. Marketing gets your firm’s name out there and attracts new clients, but you need a solid strategy and a marketing budget to direct your efforts and ensure you’re getting the most out of your spending.