The billable hour – or, in other words, the means by which most attorneys keep the lights on – has been under attack for well over a decade as clients get increasingly sophisticated and skeptical about bills, and their ability to comparison-shop between lawyers and firms becomes more pronounced. One way in which clients have been able to push back against is through auditing services that go through client bills and look for entries to dispute. Furthermore, with advances in legal automation, there are many types of tasks that attorneys might spend hours doing billable work for (e.g. large-scale document review, due diligence, etc), but which now clients expect to be completed through far more efficient means. All this can be quite intimidating for the attorney or firm whose future depends upon making sure billable hours are paid. The good news is that TimeSolv can help you create bills that get paid quickly and without dispute, while eliminating administrative costs that eat into your billable hour revenue.
Avoid Having Associates Do Non-Billable Work
Associates are trying to meet their hours requirement and look busy, but if you are not able to actually bill for their work, they become an expense without a revenue stream. With TimeSolv’s project management and reporting features, you can see what your associates are doing throughout the workday, and make sure that the work they are doing is the kind of work that the clients will be happy, not unpleasantly surprised, to see on the bill.
Easy-to-Input Time Tracking Means More Detailed Time Entries
There’s one in every office: the attorney who procrastinates on putting his or her time until days and even weeks have passed, handing a secretary a jumble of hard-to-read and hazily-worded time entries. Okay, maybe there are several in every office, and maybe one of them is you. But it’s no laughing matter when a client refuses to pay part of a bill based on a poor or incomplete description and the attorney cannot seem to recall exactly what the task was in a convincing enough manner to win the dispute. With TimeSolv’s time entry functions, attorneys can enter their time on their desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet, from any location, online or offline. Time can be entered while it is still fresh in the attorney’s mind, leading to more descriptive entries and clients who are more willing to pay bills in full.
A Streamlined Approval Process Makes for Streamlined Payments
The best way to avoid disputes with the clients over the bill is to make sure there is nothing in the bill to dispute. Achieving this means getting several sets of eyes on the bill to make sure nothing redundant, incorrect, or questionable found its way into the bill. This may sound like an intra-office logistical nightmare, but Timesolv’s approval process feature allows your firm to easily incorporate a simplified bill approval process which gives managing attorneys, partners, administrators, and clients the ability to approve the bill in a streamlined and effective manner, while minimizing errors and delay. This frees up managing attorneys from having their valuable time spent in a detail-focused (not to mention non-billable) back-and-forth with the client over the bill that eats up precious time while chipping away at client goodwill.
Get Started with TimeSolv Today
TimeSolv offers competitive pricing that brings big-firm innovation to all types of firms, no matter the size. To start your free trial of TimeSolv today, click here.