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Thursday,
February 13, 2020 / 11:00AM / Sponsored Post / Pete
McAllister / Header Image Credit: The New York Times
One of the biggest
bugaboos for lawyers is billing clients. And the most difficult aspect of
billing? It's tracking time.
Having an accurate time
tracking system is extremely important to make sure you are not
overbilling or underbilling your clients. It becomes even more important if you
are a lawyer that shares time records with your clients.
Way too many lawyers are
going by memory to bill their clients. This is inefficient and often
inaccurate.
In this article, we will
go over the hows and whys you need to track your time for your billing system
to work best.
Benefits of Time Tracking
Just about every lawyer is
paid per hour of work done on the clients behalf. It's the most common system
for billing clients because it is the one that works best.
There are many different
legal jobs with their unique set of challenges and tracking time is needed to
make sure that billing is done correctly. More often than not, a lawyer is
overbilling their clients because time was not tracked properly.
That may seem like a good
thing, but it is not. A client can sue if they feel they have been overbilled
and if your records are not accurate, then they have a pretty good case.
Billing makes sure that everything is on the up and up and you never have to waste time with billing questions or challenges.
Use a Time Tracker Software
There are so many time
tracker apps out there these days that it doesn't make sense to not use one.
Even a simple employee time tracker works just fine.
Have it set to different
types of billing hours so you can accurately see how much time was dedicated to
each part of the case. You can segment your work into categories so you know
that you spent X amount of time in a phone call and X amount of time for other
tasks.
They will essentially be
time stamped and then can be downloaded as a CSV to be imported into a
spreadsheet or sent over to your billing department.
If you have recurring projects, you can always refer to the software or corresponding spreadsheet to understand how much time each type of client will need and you can budget your time accordingly.
Calendar and
Email
Using a calendar and email
still has its place but there are loads of downsides.
A benefit of using a
calendar, is that it is easy to see at a glance when things were planned. It
also helps to integrate with your time tracker. Maybe you missed a meeting or a
phone call with a client that you can see by the calendar was actually done.
It is very possible to
forget to turn the tracker on when starting a task. The downside is that
usually you don’t write down on the calendar how long each task took. You use
the calendar to plan your time, so it is ill equipped to actually track the
time spent on that part of your project.
Email is still relevant as
you can see by the timestamp when it was completed. And you can bill for a
certain amount of time for sending emails as part of a standard rate. It all
depends on the type of email.
Though, if you are sitting
down at a PC to write an email, it is easy to hit the button on the time
tracker to make sure you are accurate in how you are billing for your time to write an email.
Working with
your Tracker
One of the biggest
benefits to using a time tracker is to have an at a glance view of how your
time is being spent to keep your workflow going.
Sorting through emails and
trying to use a calendar is not a good use of your time. It kills productivity
and affects your workflow tremendously. Even if you have a
person other than yourself doing the billing, it is not at all efficient to
have them looking at calendars, checking email time stamps and asking you how
long you were on the phone with a client on a given date.
Conclusion
Don't leave any money on
the table by improper time tracking and billing. At the same time, you don’t
want to be overbilling and causing problems for your clients and yourself.
Use technology to make your life easier. It will take time to get used to, but you will love not doing things the old way.
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