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What Software Do Lawyers Use to Track Time?

January 22, 2024 By Allison Lemasters Leave a Comment

Many lawyers rely on legal time tracking software to manage their time tracking and billing effectively. This digital solution is the first choice for tracking casework hours and simplifying client billing.

Tailored to meet the unique demands of the legal profession, such software ranges from simple legal billing software to comprehensive, subscription-based systems. However, not all of these solutions are created equal. This article will explore the advantages of such software and how pinpointing the right fit can significantly affect a law firm’s success.

What Is Legal Billing Software and How Does It Track Time?

Legal billing software is a specialized tool designed to help law firms and legal professionals manage their billing processes efficiently. Its key function is tracking time spent on casework, which is essential for accurate client invoicing and productivity tracking.

How does it log billable hours, exactly? Lawyers can start a digital timer when they begin a task and stop it once finished, ensuring precise recording down to the minute. Alternatively, they can enter the duration of activities manually. These systems often feature categorization options, allocating time to specific clients, cases, or tasks, streamlining the invoicing process.

Why Is Lawyer Time Tracking Software So Crucial?

Lawyer time tracking is important for your law firm for several reasons:

Precision in Billing: This software ensures that you’re tracking your time accurately for client billing and your own time management. Inaccuracy in billing can result in either overbilling your client or getting paid less for your time.
Increased Revenue: When you capture all your billable hours, you can maximize your law firm revenue potential. Unbilled or underreported hours can add up, significantly impacting your firm’s bottom line.
Enhanced Credibility With Clients: Transparent and detailed time tracking fosters credibility with clients. It demonstrates professionalism and accountability, which can lead to stronger client relationships and more referrals.
Efficiency Through Automation: Time tracking software automation streamlines the billing process, reducing the administrative burden on your lawyers and legal support staff. For example, you can automate your invoice approval process to speed up the billing cycle.
Accountability and Promotion of Productivity: Time tracking promotes accountability within a law firm. It encourages lawyers to stay focused and productive during their working hours, improving efficiency and, by extension, increasing billable hours.
Reporting and Analysis: Time tracking software with full accounting and reporting features can generate comprehensive reports. These insights show how your firm spends time on different tasks, clients, and matters. Such data can inform strategic decisions like pricing strategies and resource allocation.
Client Satisfaction With Timely and Fair Billing: Clients appreciate timely and accurate invoices. A prompt bill with clear, detailed time entries enhances client satisfaction with your firm.

What to Look for in Law Firm Time Tracking Software

It’s important to choose the right law firm time tracking software to ensure it meets the needs of your firm and staff. Your choices may range from free lawyer time tracking software to subscription-based versions.

However, although free options may offer basic functionality, they often lack customer support and advanced features that can handle the complexity of legal billing. Such solutions also don’t offer robust security measures, which are non-negotiable when handling sensitive client information. Subscription-based versions, on the other hand, typically provide enhanced security, dedicated support, and a suite of features designed for the nuanced needs of legal professionals.

More specifically, here are some features to look for in your legal time tracking software:

Intuitive Interface: Your solution should have an intuitive interface with a straightforward design that makes it easy for legal professionals to record their billable hours efficiently. This ease of use will also simplify training new employees on the software.
Mobile Compatibility: With clients and lawyers increasingly relying on mobile devices, mobile compatibility is a crucial aspect of your timekeeping software. Make sure that your software is accessible via smartphones and tablets to track time on the go. Bill4Time, for example, offers a mobile time tracking application for both Android and iOS devices.
Task and Activity Codes: Your software should be able to assign task and activity codes, including support for LEDES and ABA expense codes. This feature allows for easy categorization of work and simplifies the billing process, providing valuable insights into how time is spent.
Multiple Timer Support: Law firms often juggle multiple clients and matters. Your software should support multiple timers so lawyers can track time for different tasks concurrently, such as research, meetings, and consultations.
Integration Capabilities: Time tracking software should seamlessly integrate with the other tools you use, such as your email, calendars, and accounting software, for a streamlined workflow. Bill4Time, for example, has software integrations with Box, Net Documents, QuickBooks, and more.
Cloud-Based Access: A cloud-based billing system, such as Bill4Time, ensures data is stored and accessible from anywhere with a secure internet connection. This feature is essential for collaboration, especially with remote teams.

These are all key features to consider to make informed decisions about what software solution best supports your firm’s needs.

Is There an Attorney Time Tracking Template in Excel?

Excel templates are available for time tracking but may not be the ideal choice for your law firm. Here’s why:

Manual Entry Prone to Human Error: Excel templates for time tracking often require manual data entry. Lawyers typically have busy schedules, and manual input can cause errors or omissions in recording hours that can have financial and legal ramifications.
Limited Mobility: Excel spreadsheets are not mobile-friendly, so the lack of mobile compatibility can be a drawback for lawyers working on the go. A time tracking app for attorneys is often a key part of accurate, real-time tracking, especially when attorneys are in the field for client meetings or court appearances.
Lack of Customization: Excel templates are helpful, but they’re generic. You may need customization to address specific legal billing requirements. For example, task and activity codes, client association, and billing rate variations can be challenging to implement consistently across your firm with an Excel template.
Not Designed for Legal Work: Excel was not designed specifically for the legal industry, so it lacks some targeted features that a legal time tracking software offers, such as client management or built-in billing features.

Can I Track Billable Hours in Quickbooks Online?

QuickBooks is more for general business use and doesn’t include specialized features for tracking billable hours that law firms require. Law firms generally need support for complex billing arrangements, precise trust account management that aligns with stringent bar regulations, and detailed reporting for in-depth practice analysis. Using QuickBooks alone may necessitate additional steps and customizations to meet these specific legal industry requirements.

Instead, look for a dedicated legal time tracking software like Bill4Time, which is engineered to address these law firm complexities with precision. Bill4Time allows firms to capture billable hours while providing comprehensive solutions for task-based billing, maintaining compliance with bar regulations, and offering deep insights into firm operations through advanced reporting.

Ready to experience the difference a solution can make for your firm? Sign up for a free Bill4Time demo or free trial today and see how we can transform your firm’s time tracking and billing processes.

5 Ways to Optimize Remote Work Time Tracking for Lawyers

December 26, 2023 By Allison Lemasters Leave a Comment

According to a national survey sponsored by the American Bar Association (ABA), remote work options are becoming a must-have for many lawyers. 44% of surveyed individuals expressed a willingness to quit their current job if offered another with better remote work flexibility. Additionally, most participants prefer conducting pretrial hearings, depositions, and court-ordered mediations through remote means.

However, adapting to remote work setups presents unique obstacles, particularly when it comes to time tracking for lawyers. Unlike the structured office or court environment, working from home can blur the boundaries between professional and personal tasks, making it harder to track billable hours accurately.

To address these issues, consider the five following strategies to promote efficiency and precision in remote-working routines.

1. Choose the Best Remote Employee Time Tracking Software

Time tracking software can make a huge difference with remote and hybrid work in your firm, but it’s not all created equal. Be sure to choose a solution with features that suit your team best, such as automated timers that can track hours. This capability is especially handy for lawyers working from different locations, ensuring accurate billing regardless of their work environment.

Additionally, the software should offer detailed time summaries. These reports are invaluable for identifying areas requiring extra support, helping to maintain consistent productivity levels across remote teams.

Billing and invoicing features are also valuable. Compiling hours and creating invoices can be time consuming, but legal software automatically creates and sends branded invoices. This process ensures your firm produces high quality, dependable invoices no matter where they are working.

2. Use a Work-From-Home Time Tracker App

Contemporaneous timekeeping is crucial to accurate, transparent billing. Too often, lawyers rely on memory and estimate hours after the fact, which can lead to over- or underbilling. According to the ABA, contemporaneous timekeeping is a “weak spot” for many lawyers. On average, lawyers lose 10% to 15% of their potential billable time because they can’t estimate accurately. If they wait until the next day, they lose about 25% of the time. By the end of the week, that adds up to about a 50% loss.

In this context, adopting a time tracker app becomes a strategic decision. When your workday includes remote working or court appearances, these apps are particularly useful. They capture every billable moment in real-time, ensuring that each minute of legal expertise is accounted for and billed accurately. High-quality time tracking software will usually come with a corresponding app, so you can easily log your time from the platform on your desktop or from the app on any device.

3. Develop Remote Work Time Tracking Guidelines

Standardized time tracking guidelines are important in any firm, but they are even more vital for hybrid and remote teams. No employee should wonder “how do I track my remote work hours?” and instead know the exact protocol. A remote work time tracking template is a good place to start, but implementing guidelines within time tracking software will offer the most consistency across your bills.

Overall, having clear time tracking guidelines can:

Promote Accuracy: Lawyers and staff may have their own differing methods for tracking time, which can cause inaccuracies. With guidelines, everyone is following the same process and the chances of more accurate time entries increases.
Create Uniform Data: Uniform data is fundamental for accurate reporting to evaluate your firm’s productivity. Standards for timekeeping ensure that your attorneys and staff give you apples-to-apples comparisons for timekeeping.
Build Standards for New Staff Training: When you have a standard in place for timekeeping, it’s much easier to train new staff and set clear expectations to ensure they know what they’re responsible for at the start.
Foster Transparency with Clients: When the details of billable hours are vague, your clients may not trust that they’re getting value out of their legal services. Clear timekeeping guidelines provide more detail about how lawyers should be billing.

4. Provide Training on How to Track Employee Hours Working from Home

Training shouldn’t end at new hires. In addition to guidelines, you should train your staff on why accurate timekeeping is important and best practices. Conduct regular training sessions with your staff — like how to manage time in remote work settings or ethical time tracking considerations — to keep everyone on the same page. If your time tracking reports indicate that you need to improve your processes, training sessions offer an opportunity to update your staff on these changes and explain them.

5. Combine Time Tracking with Practice Management Software

Work-from-home tracking software for time is only one factor in law firm productivity. It should integrate within a broader legal case management platform to streamline your remote workflows and improve your firm’s time tracking accuracy. Here’s how:

Offers a Comprehensive Overview of Cases and Time Spent

Data requires context for interpretation. A comprehensive legal practice management platform is particularly beneficial for remote teams, as it provides a comprehensive overview of all staff activities, cases, and the time allocated to both billable and non-billable tasks. With a broad view like this, you can evaluate areas of good productivity and any opportunities for improvement.

Helps with Resource Allocation

Time tracking data can identify over- or under-utilized resources, allowing you to optimize your firm’s efficiency. With this clear view, you can allocate your resources — remote and in-person — more efficiently according to project timelines and available staff.

Assists with Prioritizing Tasks

For law firms operating remotely, clear visibility into outstanding tasks is particularly valuable. It allows you to prioritize critical projects, like urgent cases needing extensive staff involvement, and effectively plan for other tasks. This clarity is vital for remote teams, where physical distance can sometimes lead to communication gaps or coordination challenges. By having a clear understanding of the priority level of each project, you can develop a more effective course of action for managing the remaining workload.

Enhances Collaboration Across Remote Teams

Collaboration can be a challenge across remote teams. Legal practice management platforms improve collaboration by giving all staff members a view of the shared project and their individual responsibilities. Staff can receive updates on relevant tasks and share questions or insights easily through the software’s messaging and chat features.

Is There an App to Track Work-From-Home Hours?

Bill4Time is the best platform for tracking work-from-home hours. With its corresponding mobile app, automated timekeeping and billing, and convenient integrations, this cloud-based legal case management software gives you all the legal-specific features you need to support and optimize your in-office, remote, or hybrid teams. Sign up for a free demo to see Bill4Time in action!

Best Practices for a Law Firm Invoice Template

December 21, 2023 By Dan Bowman Leave a Comment

Law firm invoices are the foundation of communicating the value of legal services and building brand trust — and they all start with a good template. A well-designed invoice template is a major contributor to a law firm’s reputation and cash flow.

And in the wake of stories like the New Jersey lawyer who was suspended for overcharging clients, so-called “aggressive billers,” and a pervasive belief that lawyers overcharge — lawyers need to do all they can to ensure their invoices are trustworthy.

While these lawyers may give the profession a bad name, there are ways to combat this skepticism. An excellent place to start is with your firm’s invoice template. This blog will examine what goes into a law firm template and how you can utilize legal time tracking software to create consistent, high-quality invoices.

To begin, let’s take a look at the process of recording billable hours and sending invoices to get a better idea of what information you should include.

How Do Lawyers Record Billable Hours and Send Invoices?

Lawyers often record billable hours using manual logs or time tracking software. These records are then compiled to create detailed invoices using a template and sent to clients. Each step of this process contributes to the value an invoice demonstrates and how timely the client pays.

Here’s a breakdown of each step:

1. Record Start and Stop Times for Each Task

You can manually note the start and stop times of a task, or you can use a timer to capture your billable tasks in real-time. For example, you can start the timer before drafting an email to a client and stop it immediately once you hit the send button. If it takes you about 17 minutes to draft the email and you bill in 6-minute increments, you would record 0.3 hours of billable time for that client.

2. Detail Each Task

Detailed descriptions on invoices are vital to client trust. Including details fosters transparency and shows the client how you spent the time for their case, like “reviewing discovery responses from the opposing party” or “preparing partnership agreement contract.” If you have vague descriptions like “discovery” or “prepare documents,” the client has more room to doubt what you did with your time. The more doubt a client has about your invoice, the less likely they are to pay it.

3. Categorize Tasks by Case or Client

If you’re working on multiple cases for one client, it’s important to record which case you’re working on. Be sure to include an area for the client and the corresponding matter on your invoice template.

4. Review and Adjust Billable Hours

Always review and adjust your billable hours to ensure they’re accurate for the final invoice. This prevents overcharging clients and leaving your firm’s money on the table. Plus, it’s a matter of professional ethics to have a detailed time recording system.

To ensure consistency, establish a regular review period in your billing cycle. Encourage attorneys to dedicate a few hours every other week or at the end of the month to review the invoices going out that period.

5. Finalize Hours and Send Invoice

To prepare the final invoice, add up all the hours spent and apply the billing rate. You should also tally and include any applicable expenses. Your invoice template should have a separate area for all of these items so the client can clearly see why they owe the amount you are asking for. Consider sending each invoice with a simple attorney invoice letter that details how the invoice works and guides the client through reading it and making a payment.

Can I Create My Own Invoice Template?

It’s possible to create your own invoice template, though it requires careful design and consideration to ensure you have all the necessary legal and billing details. If you want to create your own invoice templates, here’s how:

1. Gather Necessary Information

Your invoice template may vary according to your clients and practice area, but it should always include:

Your firm’s name, logo, phone number, physical address, and email address.
The client’s details, which may be the client point of contact or a specific billing contact.
The date you’re sending the invoice.
An itemized list of the services you provided.
The billing rate for each service.
A subtotal for all services plus expenses.
The payment due date and late payment consequences.

2. Design the Layout

You can create your own invoice template or use an online invoice template to design your layout. If you’re familiar with Excel, you might wonder, “Does Excel have invoice templates?” While Excel does offer some invoice templates, a legal invoice template that is free typically doesn’t include all the necessary details a law firm needs.

If you want a great example of a law firm invoice template, scroll down to the next section.

3. Add Legal Requirements

Depending on the template you use, you will need to include any additional legal language that needs to be there, such as terms and conditions or compliance statements.

4. Develop a Numbering System

Invoice numbers are one of the most important aspects of invoicing for tax and accounting purposes, tracking payments, organizing your financial documents, and ensuring your law firm looks professional and legitimate. This number should be near the top of the invoice and easy to find.

If you’re not sure where to start, it’s a common practice to begin with 1001 for your first invoice and then increase the number by one each time you issue a new invoice (1002, 1003, and so on). Whatever numbering system you choose, make sure it stays consistent.

5. Include Payment Terms

You should outline your billing process in your representation agreement before you begin working on a client’s case. Every client should know what they can expect to see on invoices, your billing cycle, their payment options, and penalties for late payments. You can also add this information on the invoice template for client reference — it’s usually included near the bottom.

As you can see, creating a law firm invoice template is a lot of work and prone to error if you’re doing it manually. And while a template can help, you will still be responsible for a lot of manual data entry and upfront time investment. Conversely, law firm software can help you generate invoices quickly and easily.

How Do I Create a Legal Invoice with Software?

Time tracking software allows you to generate legal invoices with just a few clicks. For example, Bill4Time includes options for branded invoices with logos and company details, payment terms, late fees, currency, and much more.

Let’s walk through an example of creating a legal invoice with software:

1. Use Software to Track Time

Bill4Time uses real-time timers to keep track of how much time you spend on a task. It also automatically calculates your billable hours based on time spent and your hourly rate. To ensure you don’t miss a single minute of billable time, Bill4Time lets you generate a variety of reports to check multiple data points in your billing cycle.

2. Generate an Invoice

Once you’ve recorded your time and reviewed it for accuracy, you click the “Create Invoice” button and select the billing time period, service items, and expenses.

3. Review the Invoice

An invoice will then generate automatically from your time entries and billing information, with all the billable hours compiled into a detailed, itemized invoice. You can customize the invoice using an array of layouts and branding details — like your logo and colors — to enhance your law firm’s professionalism.

Here’s a law firm invoice example using Bill4Time invoice templates:

4. Finalize the Invoice

When your invoice is complete, you can finalize it by creating a PDF, printing it on letterhead, or emailing it directly to your client with the click of a button. Your clients then have multiple payment options, including paying through the Bill4Time client portal with an eCheck or paying with a credit card.

5. Easily Follow-Up with Automated Reminders

Bill4Time Payments helps you take control of the invoice process to get your firm paid faster. You can automatically send invoice reminders via email to ensure your clients pay their bills promptly, which also reduces your firm’s administrative burden while improving cash flow.

You didn’t go to law school to create invoices from scratch. Legal time tracking software like Bill4Time saves you time, energy, and frustration by streamlining your timekeeping, billing, and invoice generation. Sign up for a demo or free trial to see for yourself!

10 Ways Billing Software Can Increase Your Law Firm Productivity

December 14, 2023 By Nina Lee Leave a Comment

According to recent law firm productivity statistics, the top-cited challenge for law firms worldwide is operational efficiency. Technology, including legal time tracking software, is one of the best solutions to operational issues, offering capabilities like automated timekeeping and billing that can relieve stressful workloads.

Wondering how legal time tracking software can help your law firm? Here are 10 ways the right software solution can boost productivity and operational efficiency.

Ways to Increase Your Law Firm Productivity

1. Improves Law Firm Organization

With multiple clients, cases, and financial records, it’s difficult for law firms to stay organized — especially when firms start to grow. Billing software streamlines all your data to make managing client relationships easier. You can find specific data with comprehensive search functions, set default billing rates, view balances, track deadlines, and more, all from a centralized platform.

2. Saves Time

Lawyers who bill by the hour must balance the time they can charge for with the time they can’t. However, simply tracking billable hours using manual methods like spreadsheets can take up a lot of time — time that can be better spent on casework or activities that support the firm.

Legal time tracking software like Bill4Time ensures you track your billable time quickly and accurately. For example, the enhanced Statements feature can generate detailed and tailored client statements with customization options and multiple delivery methods. This feature provides a superior client experience in a fraction of the time it would take to do the same things manually.

3. Reduces Lawyer Stress Statistics

The legal industry has always been fast-paced, but the rising demands on lawyers have led to an increase in lawyer stress and mental health concerns. According to a study of 12,825 licensed working attorneys, 28% experience symptoms of depression, 19% experience symptoms of anxiety, and 23% experience symptoms of stress.

While challenges with cases or clients and the pressure to achieve contribute to these mental health issues, long hours and chaotic work environments are also factors. Using billing software to become more organized and efficient can improve work-life balance and limit overworking, leading to better overall mental health.

4. Minimizes Disputes and Human Errors

Manual methods of time tracking are time-consuming and prone to error. Lawyers may estimate hours or miss valuable billable time, and there’s no accountability for how they spend their time on cases. These manual practices can leave your law firm vulnerable to disputes that can delay payment or harm your firm’s reputation.

Timekeeping software uses automated timers with advanced features that minimize these errors. You can record multiple entries, run a timer to track the exact time spent on a task, and even automatically convert appointments to billable hours. When you send your invoices to clients, you can send them confidently, knowing they are transparent, detailed, and accurate.

5. Boosts Law Firm Revenue Per Lawyer

Losing billable time to timekeeping errors or omissions and bill write-offs can significantly harm gross profit margin in law firms. What is the profit margin of a law firm on average? For perspective, the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Carey Law School reports that the profit margin of Am Law 100 firms varied between 35% and 45% from 1986 to 2021. Achieving such profit margins might be challenging for smaller firms, but it’s a worthwhile target.

Billing software safeguards your firm’s profits, even in fluctuating economic conditions, by ensuring precise hour tracking and minimizing lost time. This precision in timekeeping directly contributes to optimizing the revenue generated per lawyer in your firm.

6. Provides Security

ABA Formal Opinion 477R, focusing on the ethical use of virtual tools under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, underscores the necessity for lawyers to protect client confidentiality in digital spaces. This need includes exercising diligence in handling client data and securely using virtual meeting platforms and videoconferencing tools.

Cloud-based timekeeping software like Bill4Time aligns with these requirements by offering robust data security features. These include user access permissions, multi-factor authentication, and encryption of sensitive data. Additionally, Bill4Time goes through frequent and regular updates, addressing potential vulnerabilities and reducing the risk of cyber threats. For secure client interactions, Bill4Time provides a client portal, accessible through individual credentials, ensuring protected communication and file sharing.

7. Automates Accounting and Payment Reminders

Administrative tasks like accounting and tracking down client payments and outstanding balances waste significant time for your firm. Billing and invoicing features with time tracking software allow you to create detailed invoices, offer flat rates and percentage discounts, set up recurring payments, and more. You can also set up automated reminders about upcoming and past-due invoices to stay on top of your clients’ billing.

8. Establishes Brand Identity

Setting your law firm’s brand apart contributes to long-term recognition and growth. Instead of generic invoices, Bill4Time helps you create professional, branded invoices with your logo, fonts, color schemes, and firm details. You can add these personalized brand touches to your client portal, client invites, and invoice emails, creating a cohesive brand across all platforms and keeping your firm top of mind.

9. Simplifies Reporting

How do you measure success in a law firm? You can’t manage your firm’s profitability and productivity if you don’t know where you stand. Bill4Time offers comprehensive reporting to view the payment history, balances due, collections, firm expenses, and productivity reports to gain full financial visibility. You can also see your firm’s productivity month over month or year over year to see what projects consume the most time. If you want to know how to measure lawyer performance, productivity reports reveal which team members contribute positively to your firm’s revenue and growth.

Some of the reports you can create with Bill4Time include:

Accounting reports: Accounting reports include information like AR aging, trust, and payments received to understand your outstanding balances.
Entry and user reports: These reports show monthly billable and nonbillable hours per user, the clients and projects created within a given time frame, and more.
Summary reports: Summary reports show you broad information or granular details as you choose. For example, you can see all time or expenses within a time frame or group the results by user, client, or project as needed.

10. Supports 24/7 Service

The client experience is a big part of your law firm’s success. The Bill4Time client portal gives your clients 24/7 self-service options to review their invoices and make partial or full payments from anywhere and on any device. This feature improves your client service and reduces the burden on your support staff with billing or invoicing inquiries from clients.

Ready to see what Bill4Time could do for your law firm’s productivity? Sign up for your free Bill4Time demo today!

Law Firm Billing Best Practices: 3 Rules Every Firm Should Adopt

November 15, 2023 By Bill4Time Staff Leave a Comment

Law firm billing can be either the bane of a lawyer’s career or the reason their law firm gets paid — it’s up to the lawyer themselves to decide. Thankfully, it’s easier to implement legal time tracking software into a law firm’s operations than most think. Legal software can help lawyers simplify the billing and invoicing process, creating a space where clients know expectations and trust the statements. This is especially vital in an environment where finances are a sore spot.

Clients continue to push back on rate increases and look for more discounts, according to a recent analysis of the legal field. As attorney rates continue to increase, clients are weighing their options and searching online for lower-cost counsel.

Importance of Legal Billing Guidelines

Getting paid has more to do with a firm than it does with its clients. If a client refuses to pay an invoice or they decline to pay on time, it means the firm has missed several vital signals — potentially going back to when they first took on the client. The problems that created their unwillingness to pay could’ve occurred a long time ago.

Let’s take a look at a fictitious firm, Woolford and Woolford SC, to show an example.

Woolford isn’t positioned as an expert in their local marketplace, so clients see them as a discount provider.
Their business development tactics rely on needy language that attracts price shoppers.
They’re desperate for work, so they welcome these clients into their firm.
Their intake process is inadequate; they don’t realize they should interview clients, set expectations, and establish/assess billing guidelines.
These clients complain about Woolford’s invoices; they refuse to pay for research, administrative expenses, or junior associates in their firm.
Partners in Woolford are conditioned by their clients to expect rejection, so they add discounts, write-downs, and write-offs to their client’s invoices preemptively.
The partners are desperate to keep their client, so they offer more. Realization rates fall as revenue and profit decline.

Many law firms deal with a similar scenario, in one form or another, daily. Clients — not firm partners or attorneys — determine what they’ll make. Yes, law firms set their rates, but ultimately, this holds less value if clients are unable or unwilling to pay.

Get Paid Faster With These Law Firm Billing Best Practices

These best practices aren’t a cure-all. Clients won’t pay law firms if there’s a legitimate reason for them to hold back. However, law firms that implement these best practices will find a large amount of non-payment issues resolved overnight.

Let’s take a look.

Law Firm Billing Best Practices #1: Build a Powerful Brand

Branding is commonly misunderstood by businesses, partners, and even marketers. Many believe that their “brand” is a promise, their product or service, their website, or even their logo — it’s not solely one of those things. On a larger scale, branding is your reputation. It’s the gut feeling people have about a specific law firm.

With many lawyers focusing on practicing law, most attorneys and law firms haven’t built or budgeted for a brand. Without a clear brand, most clients can’t tell the difference between one firm and its competitors.

Clients aren’t typically familiar with the legal industry, so they can’t assess another firm the way most legal professionals can. Clients will rely on other signals to make their decision — personal recommendations, reviews, first impressions, and price.

To fix this, law firms need to build a powerful reputation in the hearts and minds of prospective clients. There are some simple principles you can use to guide you:

1. Do what your competitors can’t or won’t do.

Become an expert in a specific practice area, win a large number of cases, achieve the impossible in a real estate negotiation. Find a way to become exceptionally known for something.

2. Create value for everyone, all the time.

Attorneys can solve problems for those around you by giving speeches, writing articles, hosting webinars and events, and serving the community, creating a powerful and valuable resource. Find a need, then solve it like no one else.

3. Promote your achievements.

Share accomplishments with others in a way that says, “I did this for clients just like you, I can do it for you too.” This is the essential crux of business development, but it’s also the main component most attorneys and firms miss. Lawyers can build a strong website, run a legal blog, or interact with their community on social media.

4. Build partnerships with other influential legal professionals.

As lawyers begin to achieve the above items, they’ll start to build a brand (reputation). Use this reputation to develop successful relationships with powerful, like-minded supporters who are interested in the value provided.

Doing this attracts an avalanche of clients. Marketing and advertising campaigns outperform competitors at a lower cost per click/visit. Firms can attract more clients than other similar practices.

These clients have seen the value provided, and they’re eager to work together. Once a firm is differentiated in their mind, they want that specific firm. As a result, they’re respectful, hopeful, and willing to pay the higher fees requested. The brand precedes the firm.

Law Firm Billing Best Practices #2: Verify Employee Timekeeping

Without a proper legal billing policy in place, money is left on the table. The team is left to track their time on a whim. They’re prone to human error and estimating their time. The longer timekeepers take to complete their timesheets, the more billable leakage their firm experiences. Ann Guinn shared research that supports this in her ABA blog post:

You lose 10% of your revenue (billable time) if you record time entries the day of once a day.
You lose 25% if you wait 24 hours to record your time.
You lose 50 to 70% if you wait just one week.

The attorneys in this particular case study were waiting until the end of the month! If this is projected out, this means firms could be losing 200% to 280% of the revenue they should have. Income that’s rightfully theirs simply because they didn’t track their time correctly.

Here’s how you fix this.

Switch to automated time tracking software: Legal time tracking software like Bill4Time provide automatic time tracking that accurately captures time. This “set it and forget it” software limits human error and stops revenue leakage.
Appoint a legal billing liaison: This could be a managing partner, director, or executive that’s responsible for managing the firm and keeping everyone knowledgeable of procedure. This legal billing liaison can create ad sample attorney billing descriptions to help firm staff write better billing descriptions.
Create an incentive system: Once a new legal billing policy is in place, it may be difficult for everyone to jump on board. It would be worth-while to create morale with incentives or awards to take the edge off and make the process a fun competition.

Treat the line items in your invoice as inventory in a store. It’s valuable revenue, and it needs treatment as such.

Law Firm Billing Best Practices #3: Follow Through With Legal Billing Guidelines

Once a law firm and its clients have agreed on legal billing guidelines, follow them to the letter. Doing this bolsters trust, decreasing the likelihood of a flagged or delayed invoice. Here’s a brief overview of what these guidelines should look like:

Shepherd invoices through an eBilling system. If estimates are conservative and there’s a particular emphasis placed on accuracy, pre-bills will be close to the final bill. This attention to detail reduces the need for discounts, write-downs, and write-offs. There’s also a chance to catch billing issues and missed requirements before clients flag them.
Pick up the phone and call clients any time there’s a disparity. Are you drastically over or under budget? Have you run into an unexpected expense? Reach out to your decision-makers and point-of-contact ahead of time. Don’t ambush your clients with a surprise (positive or negative).
Resist the urge to discount or write-off time. Treat timesheets like inventory. Remember that each line item on an invoice is a unit of revenue. Think of every improvement made to the quality of timesheets/invoices as improving the acceptance and collection realization rates for the firm.
Submit invoices on time. Poor communication and law firm sluggishness in publishing invoices is a contributing factor to delayed or decreased payment. Make sure to stick to the schedule and bill clients on time.
Offer ePayments. Use alternative fee arrangements that ensure fair compensation. Built-in online payments processors like Bill4Time Payments allow firms to safely and compliantly accept online payments. Offering ePayments increases the likelihood that clients will pay firms on-time — and 70% faster.

Take a look inside Bill4Time Payments.

Take a look inside Bill4Time Payments

Increase Firm Cashflow With Law Firm Billing Software

Implementing these tips will help boost realization rates, revenue, and profit in law firms. Using law firm billing software, like Bill4Time, to help navigate legal billing can take a practice to the next level.

Schedule a demo with Bill4Time today to see the positive impact it can have on law firm billing.

Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in July 2021. Last update: November 2023.

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4 Costly Billing Mistakes Time Tracking Software Can Solve

October 10, 2023 By Bill4Time Staff Leave a Comment

Keeping track of time spent on case research, briefs, client meetings, the discovery process, and other billable tasks is a big part of a lawyer’s day-to-day work. Lawyers often devise their own method of tracking time, but that may not be the most accurate or reliable compared to legal time tracking software.

Forgetting to start or stop a timer, losing track of billable time, waiting until the end of the day or week, or “guesstimating” time spent on a case can not only cost the lawyer and firm money, but it may have legal implications. Without a reliable and consistent timekeeping process, law firms are prone to risks and organizational challenges like poor productivity and profitability.

How Do Lawyers Track Their Time?

In the past, lawyers have relied on manual methods of calculation to charge clients by the billable hour. Now, many lawyers use legal time tracking software to accurately capture the work their firm is completing.

However, even as more law firms adopt legal management solutions, some still use traditional, manual methods to track time. They record time by hand on spreadsheets, sticky notes, notepads, or other paper methods. With varying billing increments, this can get increasingly complicated.

While it may seem convenient, this process of tracking time is inaccurate at best, and unethical at worst. It’s far too easy for lawyers to lose track of their time or make errors that can lead to inaccurate billing, client concerns, and a damaged reputation for both the lawyer and the firm.

If that’s not enough, manual time tracking is a cumbersome process. It takes extra time to track time using manual methods – time that isn’t billable. In addition, if there’s a dispute, lawyers have no way to show their process or account for the time spent on casework.

What Are the Risks of Improper Legal Time Tracking?

Lawyers open themselves and the firm to many risks when time tracking is done improperly, such as:

1. Losing Billable Time (and Revenue)

Billable hours are the bread and butter for a law firm, but they have to be accurate. No matter how stringent the processes, it’s highly probable that lawyers will forget to start or stop time, lose billable hours, or make inaccurate estimates.

According to the American Bar Association, lawyers can lose up to 10% of their billable time if they wait until the end of the day to log hours. If they wait longer, such as a day or two, that time lost can increase up to 25%.

With legal time tracking software, lawyers can quickly and easily set timers, record multiple time entries on one screen, and automatically convert appointments into time entries. Record both billable and non-billable time as it happens. This provides more precision and accuracy in billing.

2. Vulnerability to Billing Disputes

When lawyers use manual methods to track billable hours, there’s no accountability for their time. If a client questions the bill or believes the lawyer is “padding it,” the lawyer can’t adequately account for the time spent on case research, the discovery process, or other billable tasks.

A comprehensive record of time produces an auditable trail that can be referenced for billing disputes or questions. For example, a block of hours spent on discovery doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence from the client. Shorter, detailed time blocks, such as “one hour spent researching legal precedent” and “10 minutes responding to email from the opposing counsel,” help clients understand how the time was spent. It’s also easier to cross-reference some of this time with recorded appointments or correspondence.

3. High Administrative Costs

Manually tracking time costs productivity, as do manual billing processes. Often, firms have designated staff to sort through the timekeeping records for the firm’s lawyers, organize them, input them into a billing system, and send invoices to clients. Between the two, a lot of non-billable time is spent merely processing client bills.

Time tracking software streamlines and automates these processes to not only reduce errors and discrepancies but to help lawyers and staff save time and manpower. Lawyers can automatically track and sort their hours according to the case, client, or billable and non-billable time, simplifying the organization process for billing staff.

4. Decreased Client Experience

Clients seek out law firms for legal guidance and expertise, but the experience they have with the firm is what stays with them. Even if the outcome of the case isn’t what they had hoped, they remember how they were treated

And that includes billing.

Trust is important in the lawyer-client relationship. If clients have doubts about the accuracy of their bill or are overcharged, that can have a detrimental impact on the firm’s reputation. Having accurate, detailed, and transparent timekeeping and billing processes inspire trust and confidence from the client, and in turn, a better experience with the firm.

Accurate timekeeping is also a matter of professional ethics. According to the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 1.5, the guidelines for fees in a professional legal relationship include the proper consideration of the time and labor necessary for a matter. Keeping accurate and detailed records are one-way lawyers can adhere to these guidelines.

What Is Legal Time Tracking Software?

Designed for the legal industry, legal time tracking software allows lawyers to input, organize, and record the time spent on billable and non-billable tasks. This software is designed specifically for the needs of lawyers to provide granular details and improve workflows.

Lawyers often handle tasks for multiple clients or cases each day, which can create confusion and mistakes. Legal time tracking for lawyers helps to simplify and streamline the timekeeping process to reduce missed hours or billing errors.

Bill4Time is a law practice management platform that allows law firms to seamlessly track their time. Multiple timers improve billable hour accuracy by allowing you to start and stop as you jump between client matters.

The platform also comes with billing features like custom invoicing, built-in payment processing, and advanced reporting to gain better insight into your firm’s finances.

Automate Time Tracking for Lawyers

Accurate time tracking is the lifeblood of a law firm to remain profitable, yet many lawyers still prefer chaotic manual methods that can lead to over- or underbilling, ambiguity, or client concerns. With the right software, time tracking for lawyers can be an easy part of the workflow. Legal time tracking software, like Bill4Time, can help lawyers track time with transparency and accountability.

If you’re interested in seeing what Bill4Time can do to help your firm and make time tracking easy, schedule a demo today.

Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in July 2022. Last update: October 2023.