Here at TimeSolv, we have often noted the increasingly contentious relationships between attorneys and their clients when it comes to attorneys being able to quickly and comprehensively collect payment on the legal bills they issue to those clients.
In recent decades, we have seen clients demand more in-depth and uniform legal bills, dispute more attorney tasks as being non-billable, question the work of junior associates, and even hire outside consulting firms for the purpose of disputing legal bills as a matter of course and not just when a bill appears questionable.
As recently reported by the New York Law Journal, this trend is becoming so pronounced that more and more large law firms are now having to sue their clients simply to recovery payment on bills. And if this is how the largest firms are having to recover payment, what does this mean for smaller and midsize firms without the same leverage of their larger counterparts?
Suing Clients for Payment is the “New Normal”
In the article, one consultant describes the process of going to court or arbitration to seek full recovery of payment on legal bills as the “new normal.” At least a dozen such large-scale suits or arbitrations involving AmLaw 200 firms have commenced in 2016 in Manhattan or Brooklyn alone, including such white-shoe firms as Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Sullivan & Cromwell. The article suggests that clients are feeling more empowered to delay payment in a time of flat and even lowering demand for legal services, and that clients feel less loyalty towards the law firms that represent them.
Streamline Your Firm’s Collection Efforts with TimeSolv
In light of these new realities, firms of all sizes should take the necessary steps to create bills and billing procedures which promote streamlined bill approval and payment. TimeSolv offers backend automated office solutions that brings big-firm innovation to all types of firms, no matter the size. We provide low-cost automated solutions to optimize your firm’s billing, collection, expense tracking, internal reporting, and project management efforts, and offer free training to ensure that you are maximizing all the features that TimeSolv has to offer. To start your free trial of TimeSolv today, click here.