Pro bono work, from the Latin “for the public good,” refers to professional services provided at little to no cost. This work is voluntary and without payment.

The American Bar Association (ABA) encourages lawyers to provide free legal services to people in need. It can be inspiring yet challenging, particularly when it comes to tracking billable hours without actually billing, but reporting pro bono hours is important for ethical purposes.

In addition, you can’t evaluate the impact of pro bono efforts without tracking the time you devote to them. Keeping up with billable hours with a legal time tracking software like Bill4Time is important to manage pro bono reporting for accuracy and efficiency.

What Does Pro Bono Mean?

Pro bono work in the legal profession is the voluntary provision of legal services without a fee — or for a low fee. This work is important in the legal profession to provide equal access to legal services and reinforce lawyers’ commitment to justice, equality, and social responsibility. It’s not about financial gain, but showcasing a lawyer’s dedication to serving the needs of the community.

At its core, pro bono work is altruistic. Lawyers are willing to leverage their legal training and expertise to assist people or organizations with legal problems but limited means to access the legal services they need.

By offering your time and skills pro bono, you can bridge the gap in justice and ensure that vulnerable members of society have a voice and can seek justice. This goes to the ethical standards of the legal profession and improves fairness in society as a whole.

The Importance of Pro Bono Work

Pro bono work is incredibly important for promoting social responsibility and upholding the ethical standards of the legal profession. It’s a powerful tool for lawyers to actively engage with their communities and address societal issues, including inequity.

When lawyers offer legal expertise free of charge to people who need it, they demonstrate a commitment to the law and social justice, not profit, and reinforce their position as guardians of the rule of law.

Pro bono work also contributes to the ethical standards of the legal industry by promoting equal access to justice that isn’t contingent on someone’s financial means. This ensures that marginalized individuals or communities and nonprofit organizations have a voice in the legal system. It also cultivates a culture of empathy and compassion.

Why Do Lawyers Do Pro Bono Work?

Pro bono work is important because there’s a significant need for it. The system of law depends on equal access to its privileges and protection. Those without means can’t access competent legal representation, putting them at a significant disadvantage with their legal issues.

The ABA doesn’t mandate pro bono work, but it is strongly encouraged. Under Model Rule 6.1, attorneys should aspire to provide at least 50 hours of pro bono services per year, but they’re welcome to do more. Those 50 hours are only a small portion of a lawyer’s total billable hours, but they can be life-altering for the pro bono clients.

The benefits you gain are also remarkable, including advancing your skill set, challenging yourself, and building better teamwork. Pro bono work brings good publicity for a firm as well, which can bring in new clients and attract talent.

For young lawyers, pro bono work is a good opportunity to lead or argue a case that may not be available with paying clients. This is an important part of professional development, especially for young lawyers deciding how to progress in their careers.

Requirements for Pro Bono Work

Under Model Rule 6.1, lawyers should aspire to 50 hours of pro bono publico legal services per year. The majority of those 50 hours should be without a fee — or expectation of a fee — to a person of limited means or charitable, religious, civic, community, governmental, and educational organizations in matters that address the needs of persons of limited means.

Despite the ABA’s recommendation, individual state bar associations may decide to choose a higher or lower number of hours of pro bono service or a percentage of the lawyer’s professional time. Lawyers may log more or less time from year to year, but the recommendation considers the average hours each year over the course of their career.

Lawyers are permitted to do pro bono work for civil matters or in criminal matters for which there is no government obligation to provide funds for legal representation.

While doing pro bono work, lawyers are expected to behave as they would with any other client, meaning that they must have the necessary skills and competency to handle the case. Lawyers should not expect or receive compensation for their work.

The same ethical standards and professional conduct guidelines apply to pro bono cases as any other cases. They are expected to act in the best interests of the pro bono clients, just like they would for paying clients.

Do Lawyers Still Track Time for Pro Bono Work?

One of the common misconceptions with pro bono work is that it doesn’t require time tracking. While it’s inherently a community service and provided without compensation, it’s important to recognize that time tracking is essential to understanding your time commitment and impact.

Lawyers who engage in pro bono activities commit substantial hours to their cases. Tracking the time ensures accountability and aids in assessing the impact of pro bono efforts by providing key data.

In addition, some organizations or jurisdictions may require reporting of pro bono hours for ethical purposes. Though there may not be any financial transactions, time tracking is a fundamental practice in pro bono work, underscoring its professionalism and dedication to achieving positive social change.

No matter the size of the firm, pro bono case time should always be tracked, as well as the costs incurred. Some law firms may require their associates and paralegals track their pro bono hours and expenses. Tracking time and comparing it to similar cases can be helpful to evaluate efficiency and ensure that lawyers are providing reliable assistance to pro bono clients.

How Is Pro Bono Work Reported?

Like any billable time, reporting pro bono time involves a process of documenting and quantifying the hours spent on legal case work and the services that were provided to pro bono clients. It’s common for lawyers to be expected to maintain detailed records of their case work, and pro bono activities are no different. Applicable hours should include the date, type of service, and time spent in the appropriate increments.

Having detailed reports helps with reporting pro bono efforts to any relevant organizations, such as bar associations, legal organizations, or employers. Lawyers and legal staff may need to report their own contributions to managing partners as well.

Legal time tracking software like Bill4Time simplifies the reporting process and automates the organization of pro bono hours. With a lower administrative burden on lawyers and legal staff, more time can be spent on the pro bono case or other cases.

With comprehensive software, you can generate detailed reports of pro bono contributions and any associated expenses. This keeps the process streamlined, transparent, and organized.

The Role of Legal Time Tracking Software

Legal time tracking software plays a key role in optimizing pro bono work for your law firm. It not only enhances efficiency in time tracking and reporting but promotes accountability and accuracy for your pro bono efforts.

Bill4Time offers a comprehensive solution tailored to the needs of legal professionals. Time tracking is automated and streamlined to reduce manual workloads and ensure precise, error-free records of pro bono hours. All pro bono time can be gathered and documented quickly and easily for any reporting requirements.

Tips for Effective Pro Bono Reporting

Here are some tips to improve your pro bono reporting:

• Prioritize accuracy in recording pro bono hours and tasks with a reliable legal time tracking software.
• Establish a routine for entering pro bono hours in real time to prevent errors and improve accuracy.
• Document the nature of the legal services provided, the client, and the outcomes, including any legal research, client consultations, court appearances, or document drafting.
• Collaborate with legal support staff to ensure all efforts are documented.

Effectively Manage Pro Bono Work with Bill4Time

Working pro bono cases is a rewarding part of the legal profession, but there’s work involved in tracking pro bono time and services rendered to understand the impact of your pro bono efforts. Bill4Time simplifies this process with accurate tools that streamlines timekeeping and reporting, reduces administrative burden, and showcases tangible results.

Schedule a demo with Bill4Time today to see how it can help transform your law firm’s time tracking and keep track of pro bono work.

Following the global disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, many traditional industries had to adapt to work-from-home, including the legal industry. The rise of remote work is still continuing years later, fueled by advancements in technology and shifting work dynamics.

The legal industry is increasingly embracing the flexibility and convenience of remote work, which is altering the traditional landscape of legal practice and thrusting the crucial role of efficient time management to the forefront.

With this new work paradigm, legal professionals have to juggle tasks, stay organized, track time, and deliver results in nontraditional environments, which requires comprehensive legal time tracking software like Bill4Time. This integrated platform empowers lawyers and legal professionals to maintain client service while managing tasks, keeping track of billable hours, and enhancing collaboration.

Challenges of Remote Work for Law Firms

Remote work opened up possibilities for law firms, but it also brought some unique challenges to maintain efficiency and client satisfaction. Communication and collaboration were once handled in the office, but they’re now more complex in virtual environments with hindered team cohesion, slow responses, and misinterpretations.

Billable hours are also a challenge with remote work. Tracking hours is more complex with a remote, distributed environment. Traditional methods like manual timekeeping are no longer sufficient and may lead to errors or lost time and revenue.

Remote work has other obstacles, including task allocation, tracking case progress, and managing client interactions. These intricacies can have a negative impact on the quality of legal services and practice efficiency.

How Do Law Firms Manage Remote Staff Time?

Managing remote staff can be difficult in any industry. In the legal industry, time tracking software is a crucial tool to manage lawyer and legal staff’s time and maintain operational efficiency. Time tracking software like Bill4Time offers a comprehensive solution that allows law firms to monitor and manage their remote team’s work hours and tasks.

Accurate time tracking ensures precise billing with accurate billable hours, improving transparency and credibility with clients. This transparency fosters client trust and minimizes billing disputes, which can be time consuming and expensive. Accuracy also provides insightful productivity analysis to determine how time is allocated across multiple tasks, ensuring you can optimize your resources effectively and streamline your processes.

Finally, time tracking software makes it quick and simple for remote staff to log their work hours, giving managers real-time visibility into task and project progress. This transparency is key for enhancing communication and collaboration among team members and avoiding information silos.

As the legal industry continues to adapt to remote work dynamics, time tracking software stands as a crucial component for law firms to ensure accurate billing, maintain a high level of service for clients, and improve operational efficiency.

Current Software Solutions for Remote Time Management

Legal technology is making waves in the legal industry and providing different software tools to address the complexities of law firms – and specifically, remote legal work. These tools can adapt to your law firm’s specific needs, including time tracking and expense tracking.

Though there are many options for legal technology, not all of them will be appropriate for your law firm’s needs. Bill4Time is an exceptional solution that provides comprehensive tools for remote time tracking and practice management. The suite of features is designed to streamline various aspects of the legal practice, such as recording billable hours and expenses, automating client billing, and tracking matters.

Bill4Time also integrates with other software tools to ensure consistency across your law firm. For example, you can integrate your document management tools like Google Drive and Dropbox, email, and accounting software like QuickBooks to simplify and sync your tech stack.

6 Practical Tips for Effective Remote Time Management for Law Firms

With remote legal work, efficient time management is key for law firms to maintain productivity, foster client relationships, and deliver quality services. Here are some tips to improve your remote time management and ensure ongoing success with your remote legal team.

1. Establish Clear Work Expectations

Any remote work setup relies on clear expectations and guidelines for success. Your remote team must understand their work hours, availability windows, and preferred methods of communication to keep everyone on the same page and avoid missed messages and confusion.

In addition, with complex projects that require multiple remote team members to work together, it’s important to establish clear project deadlines and priorities. If everyone knows what they’re responsible for, you can avoid delays that throw off the timeline of the entire project and create unreasonable workloads for others.

2. Implement Structured Time Tracking

As mentioned, tracking your firm’s billable hours and productivity can be more difficult with remote teams. If everyone is tracking manually or submitting using disparate platforms, you could end up with a lot of work bringing it all together for your billing and reporting.

Set standards for your remote staff to ensure they understand how to track time appropriately, keep up with their time logs for billable and non-billable hours, and provide details about their work activities.

This ensures precise client billing, minimizes the risk of disputes, and provides insights into how your staff spends their time. Though most staff take their responsibilities seriously as remote employees, it’s important to have accountability built in to reduce issues in the future and avoid client disputes.

3. Utilize Collaboration Tools

For all its benefits, collaboration can suffer in remote environments. It’s important to have collaboration tools that maintain connections between team members, such as video conferencing platforms, document sharing, and project management tools.

Together, these features and tools can foster seamless collaboration on cases, tasks, and individual assignments, even with a distributed workforce. You could even consider co-working, which brings the team together to collaborate on a project in real time – just in a virtual space.

4. Regular Check-Ins and Communication

It’s important to avoid isolation with your remote staff. Schedule regular team check-ins with virtual meetings that offer an opportunity to discuss project progress, address any ongoing challenges, and share updates. This activity improves transparency and ensures everyone is informed to avoid delays or errors caused by poor communication. You can use phone calls, text messages, or video chats, depending on what your team prefers.

Keep some of these check-ins more social in nature. Consider a virtual “watercooler” where staff can share work-appropriate life developments and engage in small talk to mimic an in-office environment. If everyone’s location allows, you could host a monthly in-person team meeting and bring everyone into the office.

5. Prioritize Work-Life Balance

One of the biggest complaints of remote lawyers is that they have blurred lines between their professional and personal lives. They’re not so much “working from home” as “living at work,” which inevitably leads to burnout – an already significant concern in the legal industry.

Without strict boundaries, work-life balance can suffer in remote environments. It can be difficult for staff to set clear distinctions between their work and personal time – especially if there’s more to do than time to do it. Encourage your staff to find a healthy balance and prevent burnout that hampers productivity.

For example, your staff could set clear out-of-office hours during which they turn off notifications on their devices and mentally “leave” the office. It’s also important for managers to understand these boundaries and avoid communication outside of the established schedules.

6. Continuous Training and Support

Few workplaces transitioned to remote work without a few hiccups along the way. This is especially true of the largely traditional legal industry and working with unfamiliar legal time management software.

Make sure you choose a software solution with an intuitive interface, such as Bill4Time, and provide thorough training for your staff. You should also offer resources, tutorials, and workshops to help your remote staff use the software features to their fullest and make the most of your investment.

These tips are a great start to ensure that your remote team has what they need to succeed, but it’s important to revisit and improve your processes on a regular basis to ensure that your team stays efficient, connected, and empowered to excel while working from home.

Manage a Remote Law Firm with Bill4Time

Overcoming time management challenges in remote law firms is a big undertaking, but it’s critical for ensuring productivity and delivering on your client expectations. Without in-person interactions, navigating the complexities of accurate time tracking and task management can be overwhelming.

A software solution like Bill4Time offers a transformative approach to remote time management. By streamlining your time tracking, billing, invoicing, and project management, Bill4Time enables law firms to tackle remote work challenges, but it’s not enough on its own.

To maximize the benefits of legal technology and remote time management, consider these practical tips to manage your remote team, such as establishing expectations, structuring time keeping, using collaboration tools, conducting regular check-ins, and maintaining work-life balance, to enhance remote work efficiency for long-term success.

Ready to empower your remote team with innovative legal software solutions? Schedule a demo to see Bill4Time in action!

In any business, keeping an eye on the bottom line is essential. For law firms, this can be a challenge, as there are many ways that money can be lost throughout a case. From inefficient time-tracking to inaccurate billing, there are many potential pitfalls. However, there is one solution that can help to increase law firm revenue: legal billing software. Choosing the right legal billing software is essential for maximizing its benefits. Consider time-tracking, billing accuracy, and customer service when evaluating different packages. Take a look at solutions built specifically for the legal industry to get the most out of your investment. =

3 Common Ways Law Firms Lose Money 

Time Tracking Issues

Many lawyers still rely on manual methods of tracking time by using spreadsheets or notepads. This antiquated approach to timekeeping is fraught with problems, including the potential for lost billable time and revenue, vulnerability to billing disputes, and high administrative costs.

With spreadsheet or notepad timekeeping, it is easy for lawyers to forget to record their time or lose track of their records, leading to lost billable hours and ultimately lost revenue for the firm. Manual timekeeping doubles the work since someone must manually enter all data into the system.

Manually keeping track of time leaves attorneys vulnerable to billing disputes. If a client questions a lawyer’s billing records, it can be difficult for the attorney to prove that the charges are accurate without detailed and meticulous records.

Invoicing Frequency

When it comes to law firm revenue, timely billing is everything. The longer you wait to send a bill, the longer you wait to get paid. Clients can’t pay a bill they haven’t received.

Not billing promptly sends the message to your client that prompt payment is not that important to you. Sending your invoices at the end of each month helps to avoid confusion or miscommunication and ensures that you and your clients are on the same page. 

Billing Bottlenecks 

Getting paid by clients is a significant problem for 61% of small law firms, according to recent research conducted by Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute. Law firms that don’t provide clients with various payment options, like online payments and accepting credit card payments, are more vulnerable to decreased law firm revenue due to not getting paid on time. 

What Is Legal Billing Software? 

Legal billing software is downloadable or cloud-based that helps lawyers accurately track their time and invoice their clients. A robust software, like Bill4Time, will have the capability to track time, LEDES billing format, create custom invoices, accept online payments, and meet state bar regulations for billing. Law firms use dedicated legal billing software to improve their bottom line by improving invoicing processes and reducing inaccurate time management and billing bottlenecks. 

What Billing Software do Law Firms Use? 

Lawyers are always looking for ways to be more efficient and maximize their billable hours, so they prioritize cloud-based software solutions that have integrated time tracking, easy invoice options, and a client portal for online payments. 

Law firms need industry-specific features like trust & IOLTA accounting which allows lawyers to reconcile trust accounts without a secondary application. They also look for software that provides LEDES billing, the most widely used e-billing standard for law firms invoicing corporate clients.

Why Does My Law Firm Need Legal Billing Software? 

As a law firm, you know that time is money. Every minute spent on administrative tasks is a minute that could be spent on billable hours. 

Automate the billing process

You, and your team, enter matter information as time-tracked once, and the software will take care of the rest, generating invoices and sending them out to clients on your behalf. 

Manage your cash flow 

You will always have a clear record of what has been billed and remains outstanding. You can responsibly allocate your resources to maximize your profits. 

Track payments and expenses

Having this information organized and readily available can save you a great deal of time and hassle when it comes time to file taxes or apply for loans or lines of credit.

Billing automation will save you and your team considerable time each month, which can be spent growing your business. 

How to Identify the Best Legal Billing Software

When choosing legal billing software, there are a few key factors to keep in mind.

Choosing a program compatible with your firm’s existing tech stack, including your law practice management software, is critical to success. Consider the cost, ease of use, and customer support options. Mobile access is also crucial for lawyers who can access their files on any device — iPhone, iPad, or Android.

And finally, security is always a top priority when it comes to sensitive legal information. Look for software that has industry-standard security protocols in place to protect your data. 

By keeping these factors in mind, you’ll choose the best legal billing software for your needs.

Best Practices for Implementing a Legal Billing Software

There are many different types of legal billing software on the market, and it can be challenging to decide which one is right for your law firm.

When choosing new software for your law firm, there are a few important factors to remember:

• You must ensure that the software is compatible with your existing legal practice management software.
• Be sure to clearly understand your law firm’s billing policies before setting up the software to ensure everything is billed correctly.
• The software should be easy to use, but you still need to take time to train your staff on how to use the new software.
• You want a responsive and helpful company when you run into problems. If you run into issues, you can contact the support team.

A little upfront investment will pay off in the long run by preventing billing mistakes and increasing efficiency. Following these simple tips, you can set your law firm up for success with legal billing software.

Increase Law Firm Revenue with Legal Billing Software

Ultimately, you can improve your firm’s bottom line and the client experience by investing in legal billing software. Here are five ways a legal billing software can help you achieve success: 

1 ) Accurate Time Tracking

Time entry and expense tracking are crucial for any organization looking to boost productivity and improve profitability. Yet many organizations struggle with manually tracking time and expenses, leading to inaccuracies and lost data. The software makes tracking time and expenses by the user, client, or project easy.

Move beyond the notepad, and start tracking your time with a cloud-based software solution. Bill4Time allows you to enable multiple timers so you can easily jump between cases without worrying about where you left off. 

Whether on the go or at the office, easy time entry makes it simple to run timers simultaneously, record multiple time entries on one screen, and automatically convert appointments into time entries. You’ll always know your organization’s productivity and financial status with daily and weekly time summaries. 

2 ) Automated Billing

Automated billing and online payments can make it easier for clients to pay their invoices, resulting in quicker payment turnaround times. Clients tend to delay payment if they don’t understand the invoice. Prevent this from happening by providing detailed and informative invoices.

With legal billing software, like Bill4Time, you can set up invoice templates with custom settings such as your billing policy and payment links to pay online —  you can even perform batch invoice creation to save administrative time. 

You can even extend your brand while increasing workflow efficiencies by personalizing and creating branded invoices with your logo.

3 ) Online Payments

Online payments are becoming increasingly popular, and customers expect businesses to offer this option. You may even miss out on potential customers if you don’t offer online payments. 

Online payments allow firms to quickly and easily receive payments from clients. This can be done via credit card, debit card, or even PayPal. In addition, online payments are more secure than traditional methods, such as mailing a check. 

With Bill4Time, your law firm can process online payments right within the platform with Bill4Time Payments. The native payment solution allows you to create custom payment links with Link2Pay that can be added to emails or invoices. 

4 ) Custom Reporting

Real-time data is essential for any growing business and managing cash flow. You’ll want a solution with comprehensive reporting to manage your firm’s financial performance better and identify trends to ensure success—review payment history, balance due, collections, expenses, productivity, and summary reports. 

Legal billing software should be able to run user activity reports, so you can get detailed insights into how your team works, including efficiency, expense, schedule, and internal tracked time. Bill4Time offers custom reporting that allows you to track all expenses and other billing-related data. Including payment tracking so you can get a full view of your firm’s cash flow, pending payments, late invoices, or refunds. This data can help you identify areas of improvement so your team can work smarter, not harder. 

5 ) Enhanced Client Experience

Client portals are a great way to provide your clients with more information and control over their billing. Empower your clients to log in, view their account balances, make payments, and see a detailed fee history. By enabling the client portal in Bill4Time, clients have 24/7 accessibility to make payments or view invoices.

Grow Your Law Firm Revenue with Legal Billing Software

The legal industry is one of the most competitive and rapidly-changing fields. To succeed, law firms must be cutting edge in all aspects of their business – including billing. With so much at stake, it’s no wonder that more and more law firms are turning to legal billing software to help them stay ahead of the competition.

Are you ready to see how legal billing software can benefit your law firm? You can schedule a demo with Bill4Time today, and let us show you how our software can help you increase billable hours and grow your business.

“Buy Now, Pay Later” options are becoming increasingly popular at checkouts. These short-term financing options allow consumers to finance both everyday and big-ticket purchases in the hundreds or thousands of dollars to make payments easier.

Now, the short-term financing trend has made its way to the legal industry. Legal fee financing is an alternative payment method that law firms can offer to relieve the burden of high one-time bills and improve access to legal services for the clients who need it most.

Learn more about legal fee financing and other alternative payment methods to provide a more client-centric experience at your law firm.

What Is Legal Fee Financing?

Legal fee financing is an alternative funding solution that allows clients to pay for their legal costs in regular intervals. The payments are typically set up as monthly payments, giving clients time to manage their legal fees instead of a high lump-sum payment.

With legal fee financing, your law firm receives the full payment amount up front, then the client pays a third-party creditor in installment payments. Traditional financial institutions may offer loans, but legal fee financing often involves short-term loan creditors. The American Bar Association offers guidance on how law firms can help clients with financing options.

How Is Legal Fee Financing Different from Payment Plans?

Though they both involve installment payments, there are a few key differences between legal fee financing and payment plans:

Legal Fee Financing

Legal fee financing helps firms grow their client base by broadening client access to legal services. Unfortunately, that also comes with extra costs. For example, if a client misses a payment, they could end up with a lot of interest that will increase their total cost, or worse, involve significant debt or collections.

There are downsides for law firms as well. Offering legal fee financing gets you paid up front and improves cash flow, but the tradeoff is monthly processing fees that can get expensive.

Pros:

• Helping clients pay for legal services more easily with smaller, more manageable payments over time
• Broadening and diversifying the client base for your law firm
• Getting upfront payments for legal services without burdening clients

Cons:

• Clients may struggle to make payments with interest and end up in collections
• Installment payments have monthly process fees for the law firm that can add to monthly expenses

Payment Plans

Payment plans allow clients to pay over time with a number of different models, including installment payments, subscription models, and more. There are no additional fees for these options – there’s just an agreed-upon amount that clients pay on a predetermined schedule until the balance is paid off.

Without the added interest and fees, payment plans are a more client-centric option that allow clients to handle large bills within a schedule that works for them, while also giving your firm steady cash flow.

Pros:

• Flexible payment arrangements to suit clients’ needs
• Improved access to legal services and a diversified client base
• No additional fees or interest for clients or law firms with on-time payments
• Multiple payment models to suit a variety of clients

Cons:

• With payment plans, law firms don’t receive upfront payments for legal services
• Breaking up large legal bills for complex cases can create poor cash flow

Benefits of Offering Multiple Ways to Pay

Offering multiple ways to pay benefits your law firm in many ways, including:

Client Convenience

Legal fees can be challenging for some clients, especially during economic downturns. Not everyone has the means to pay large legal bills at once, but they still need legal help to address their issue. Offering multiple payment options – including payment plans – allows clients to choose a way to pay that works best for their budget.

Gain Insights from Reporting

Multiple payment methods that are tracked digitally ensure that you have accurate, real-time reporting to continuously improve your firm’s client experience. Once clients make payments, they’re automatically posted to the account and synced within your accounting platform. Over time, you can see what payment options work best for your clients and the state of your firm’s cash flow and accounts receivable.

Reducing Physical Checks and Payment Methods

Some clients may prefer physical checks and invoices, but the legal industry is increasingly shifting to digital methods. Offering different payment options and digital delivery of invoices and payments allows clients to choose the method that works best for them. And on your end, you won’t need to deal with the administrative burden of manual billing and collections, checks getting lost in the mail, and manual data entry.

Get Paid Faster

If you’re relying on a manual invoicing process, it takes time to update invoices, send them, wait for the checks to come, and register the payments. This delay is bad enough, but if payments are late, your firm could struggle with the burden of poor cash flow. Flexible payments reduce the likelihood of having to devote a lot of time each month to following up on late payments.

How to Adopt Payment Plans with Bill4Time

If you want to offer payment plans and alternative fee arrangements at your law firm, there’s no better way than Bill4Time Payments. This payment option allows you to accept online payments and process all transactions within the system – without the need for third-party services or integrations.

Bill4Time also supports custom payment plans according to your client’s needs to avoid missed payments and make the experience more convenient. You can create payment plans for weekly or monthly installments, offer financial flexibility, and ensure your law firm gets paid on time. Bill4Time has automated payment reminders as well to help your clients stay on top of their bills.

Streamline Law Firm Payments with Legal Billing Software

Flexible payments are about more than just helping your clients – they can be a huge advantage for your firm. With multiple payment options, you can provide access to legal services for a wider base of clients, bring in more consistent revenue, and make a difference in your clients’ lives.

While initially a necessity during the widespread pandemic shutdowns, remote work is here to stay. More and more law firms are getting on board and embracing remote work — even as far as entirely virtual offices — but with certain disadvantages of remote working, it’s not for everyone.

Discover the advantages and disadvantages of remote work at law firms, including the major challenges and solutions to create a well-oiled remote machine.

Why More Firms Are Working Remotely

The legal industry has long been one of the most resistant to the changing landscape of the workforce, including remote work. But once the pandemic forced businesses to adapt to remote work practically overnight, more law firms and lawyers saw the benefits of incorporating remote work into their practice.

Why Do Law Firms Struggle with Remote Work?

Law firms face heavy compliance rules and confidential data that creates additional challenges in supporting remote staff. Law firms are taking a more customized approach, such as a hybrid model with partial remote and in-office work or a completely virtual firm with no physical office.

Collaboration is another sticking point, as it’s crucial to the day-to-day operations in most law firms. This is particularly apparent with older lawyers that are more accustomed to in-person meetings and interactions with clients and support staff.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Remote Work for Law Firms

Remote work isn’t ideal for every firm. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of remote work for law firms.

Advantages

Increased Flexibility and Work-Life Integration

One of the biggest benefits of remote work is the flexibility in schedule. Lawyers and staff can manage their schedules at the times that work best to balance the responsibilities in their personal lives, leading to better work-life integration.

Expanded Talent Pool and Access to Remote Expertise

Talent is hard to come by, especially if location is an issue. Allowing remote work significantly expands your talent pool and gives you an opportunity to recruit the best and brightest for your firm, rather than relying on who’s in the immediate area.

Cost Savings and Reduced Overhead Expenses

Virtual law firms often go without a physical office or significantly reduce office hours. While this doesn’t work for every firm, having less in-office time means fewer overhead expenses and operational costs.

Disadvantages

Potential Impact on Teamwork and Collaborative Dynamics

Remote work limits face-to-face interactions between staff members and clients, taking a toll on communication and teamwork. While virtual communication tools can help, more traditional lawyers and clients who prefer in-person interactions may struggle with the change.

Difficulty in Maintaining Work-Life Balance

Some remote employees feel like they never clock out and suffer from the blurred lines between work and home. Work-life balance is tough enough to achieve in law, let alone with a remote work schedule and no clear separation between work time and leisure time.

Limited Access to Physical Resources and Facilities

Not everyone is technologically sophisticated. It’s easy for staff working remotely to miss communications or struggle with the technology to support remote work. For example, a VPN may limit access to a matter, creating security risks or limitations on staff.

Tips to Optimize How Your Firm Works Remotely

Considering remote work for your law firm? Follow these tips to optimize your remote processes:

Establish Clear Communication Channels and Protocols

Clear and consistent communication is essential when working remotely. Establish communication channels like email, messaging, and video conferencing with clearly defined expectations for response times and availability.

Implement Effective Project and Task Management Systems

Software tools designed for remote collaboration and task tracking are crucial to keeping your team on track. Implement systems to assign and track work, set deadlines, monitor project progress, and enable communication between staff.

Foster a Culture of Trust and Accountability

It takes dedication and autonomy to thrive without the direct supervision of an in-office environment. Foster a culture that values trust and encourages staff to take ownership of their work. Once you set clear expectations for performance and provide feedback, entrust your staff to manage time and meet deadlines.

Prioritize Cybersecurity and Data Protection

Cybersecurity risks are one of the challenges for remote work in the legal industry. You need robust cybersecurity measures in place to protect sensitive client information and confidential data, including secure internet connections, strong password policies, regular software updates, and regular staff training. Your team should have VPNs and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for an added layer of security.

Encourage Regular Check-Ins and Virtual Team-Building Activities

Teamwork and collaboration are important for a productive remote environment. Encourage periodic check-ins with one-on-one meetings or team video conferencing to provide support and facilitate camaraderie. Virtual team activities, such as online games and happy hours, help staff bond and boost morale in a remote environment.  

Finding the Best Tools to Work Remotely

Remote work is the new normal, even for the legal industry, but it’s important to have tools to support lawyers working from home – including legal practice management software.

For example, time tracking, which is already a challenge in the office, can be more difficult for remote teams. Automated timekeeping with legal practice management software saves time with inputting and minimizes errors while providing clear, seamless communication about the time spent on cases and legal billing. 

Working remotely as a lawyer presents challenges with document management, but cloud-based documents allow all pertinent staff to see updates and make changes as needed to keep work flowing. With tools like access control, you can restrict access to documents to “need to know” only. Document management with Bill4Time also integrates with your current tools, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

Another important tool is a communication and collaboration platform. Once remote staff has clear expectations, a centralized communication platform helps lawyers and support staff feel more connected and simulates an in-office environment. It also sets clear boundaries with availability for better work-life balance.

For client communication, a client portal enables secure, rapid communication between lawyers and clients. All conversations can be connected to a client’s account or case to ensure nothing is lost in the shuffle.

Final Thoughts on Remote Work

There are pros and cons to remote work – for both the firm and the staff. If you’re considering remote work for your firm, it’s important to have a plan and systems in place, including legal practice management tools, to provide support and encourage accountability and productivity.

Though you may have opened your own firm to practice law, at its core, a law firm is a business. Whether you’re tracking overhead expenses, billing, or taxes, you have to pay attention to key law firm profitability metrics and what they mean for your firm and legal practice management.

How do you know if you’re in the red or black? If you’re hitting revenue goals for the quarter? After all, lawyers can lose up to half their revenue from billing mistakes, but key performance indicators (KPIs) offer insights into your business performance to grow and profit.

What Are Key Performance Indicators?

A key performance indicator is a data point that demonstrates whether you are reaching your business goals – a set of quantifiable measurements used to gauge a company’s long-term performance. Taken as parts of your whole financial picture, you can determine if your law firm is moving in the right direction for your goals.

Like most data, KPIs start with a goal, such as “how many hours did my associates bill last quarter?” or “how many clients did we bring in this year compared to last year?”

Some examples of KPIs that law firms use include:

• Hours billed
• Revenue for the quarter or year
• Number of invoices submitted and paid
• Number of new clients acquired

What Is a Metrics Dashboard?

A metrics dashboard is where you find all your relevant KPIs in one centralized location. At a glance, you can see where your law firm stands from a business perspective, including whether you’re making money or how much value you’re deriving from talent.

Your metrics dashboard also enables deeper analysis using analytics, which track your KPIs over time. With analytics, you can evaluate the trends and patterns of your business over a specific timeframe and create new goals based on the information.

In short, a dashboard gives you a view of your business in the short and long term.

Common Methods Law Firms Use to Track Metrics

Law firms vary in how they track metrics and KPIs, but most use the following methods:

Manual Tracking and Data Entry

Though common in the legal industry, manual tracking and data entry is the least efficient and most error-prone of all the methods. It’s easy for associates to forget how many hours they’ve billed or how many clients they’ve spoken to in a given timeframe. Manual tracking and entry also takes time in itself, pulling you or your staff away from revenue-generating activities.

Practice Management Software

Practice management software offers a myriad of benefits for your law firm, including robust, customizable, and easily shareable reports to evaluate your firm’s financial health. Software with a centralized dashboard keeps all the information in one place, including key financial reports like a balance sheet or income statement.

Specialized Legal Analytics Tools

Specialized legal analytics tools can be helpful for visualizing data trends and predicting outcomes, but it doesn’t necessarily give you the KPIs you need to get the feedback necessary for rapid business decisions.

Outsourced Metric Tracking and Reporting to Third-Party Providers

Outsourcing the work for metric tracking and reporting to third-party providers is a great way to save time, but it adds some complexity. There can be security concerns or communication issues, not to mention the added costs.

How to Organize Your Dashboard

Dashboards can be a huge help to your firm, but they’re ultimately just a tool. You have to set up your dashboard properly to get the most out of it.

Identifying Relevant Law Firm Profitability Metrics

There are virtually endless metrics you can track in your firm, but that’s not a good use of your time. Choosing your metrics should be based on the goals you have and the questions you want answered. If you’re not sure, start with the common law firm KPIs and go from there.

Grouping Metrics Based on Categories or Areas of Focus

Once you have a list of metrics, categorize them based on different areas of focus like client management, financial performance, case management, staff performance, or marketing efforts. This will help you organize your dashboard to get the information you want.

Designing a Visually Appealing and User-Friendly Dashboard Layout

A visually appealing and user-friendly dashboard is key for the effectiveness of your metrics tracking. Use tools and features like labels and data visualizations like bar charts and line graphs to make data trends easier to understand – and explain to other stakeholders.

Customizing a Dashboard to Suit Your Specific Needs and Preferences

A robust legal practice management software platform will have a customizable dashboard that reflects the specific needs of your firm, such as custom tags, real-time data updates, and benchmarks or targets based on industry data. These features exist to make your experience easier, so use them to your advantage.

5 Financial Metrics Law Firms Should Track

• Revenue and profitability metrics. This is your bottom line. This is the simplest, most critical metric that needs to be top of mind at all times.
• Billing and collection metrics. It sounds obvious, but keeping track of your bills is a critical operational need that needs to constantly be monitored.
• Expense tracking and management metrics. Expenses may change depending on what is happening with the business. For example, your marketing budget may need to be expanded, or heating and cooling during the summer and winter months. All of the items that need to be paid for to keep the business running need to be tracked under expense metrics.
• Utilization and realization rates. How much are you actually able to bill, and how much of that billing are you able to translate into revenue? These ratios can tell you a lot about how much of your efforts and tasks are profitable.
• Client acquisition and retention metrics. This is perhaps the second most important metric besides profitability. Clients drive revenue, and long-term clients equal money in the bank. Knowing how many clients you have and how many clients you are keeping is a key component of maintaining the viability of your business.

Using Bill4Time’s Reporting Dashboard to Simplify Metric Tracking

Bill4Time’s legal practice management reporting dashboard features customizable options to prioritize the data that matters most. It’s also user-friendly – all you have to do to set up your dashboard is type, click, and drag. Consider what you want to prioritize, whether it’s time and expenses, client management, or other information.

When you need to evaluate your data, you can use the reporting function to look at the performance of your chosen metrics over time. If you need to share that information, you can export the raw data as a .xlsx or .csv file.

Gain Insights into Your Firm

Running a law firm isn’t as simple as just practicing law. You have to pay attention to the business side of things, which includes metrics and KPIs that indicate your firm’s overall health. Law practice management software is a crucial component to organize your data in an easy-to-use dashboard that keeps it at your fingertips.