The thriving small law firm of Bonnabeau, Salyers, Stites & Doe (“BSSD”), however, discovered they could control the process instead. Apparently, the difference was night and day – even going from losing to gaining sanity.

BSSD is a Minneapolis-based boutique law firm that drafts, prepares, reviews and negotiates hundreds of information technology contracts for healthcare, insurance and financial entities nationwide. BSSD’s former ideation grew to a firm of seven attorneys after it went to the TimeSolv Website and tested TimeSolv Legal time and billing early in 2001 for free.

The negative impact of its previous system was sapping management and profitability. “We would have gone crazy if we hadn’t changed over,” asserts Bob Doe, who is the current managing partner. Raymond R. Bonnabeau, the managing partner during the transition, concurred. “I would have been looking for a bell tower. TimeSolv took a heck of a lot less time and is invaluable unless you have an administrative person you just want to keep busy.”

Attorneys like that:
• Time entry is quick and easy
• Can enter time from anyplace

Managing partners and the first named attorney on the firm like that TimeSolv:
• Organizes everything efficiently
• Is easier to manage
• Centralizes entries and billing

So dramatically did TimeSolv shave down the task that Bonnabeau, who used the program for 2 years until his managing partner days were over, recalls that TimeSolv completed the billing in 1/10th of the time it had taken before, which would be a decrease of 90%. What’s interesting is that TimeSolv, on average, saved the managing partner about half the time, plus about four hours for each other timekeeper. The difference? In my opinion, pain and suffering. The previous emotional bog with a tortuous task was so great a cost that the relief was huge. In general, I find that attorneys recognize the value of pain and suffering for their clients but often fail to measure its cost in their own situations. Yes, you can do without streamlining, but what is it doing to your life and your practice?

Hosted – and Backed Up - Online
The TimeSolv system is hosted online with backups every five minutes, so data is never lost since it’s managed at a data center and not on the user’s computer. The system has never been down in the eight years of use at BSDDA, and has been completely predictable with real-time updates and tracking missing time. Time and notes can be entered and accessed from anywhere by all Timekeepers - from the computer, an iPhone or Blackberry, laptop or from home. It has administrative access settings, to insure that each individual views only relevant information.

The steps required to populate the system with clients and matters didn’t take long, Bonnabeau said. It takes 20 seconds, if that, to create a new client matter. Give it a name. Hit save and you’re done, he said. Also, he said, you don’t have to think up your own activity descriptions because a list is provided such as “Conference call with client and you can add activities.

Before discovering TimeSolv, each attorney could take a good half-day on Saturday piecing hours together in Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet, said Doe. Bonnabeau then would have to cross-reference, do the math by calculator, crosscheck and check it again if there was a discrepancy with all those .2s and .9s, and aggregate into one bill. It could take an hour just to assemble into one bill, he said.

Keep human frailty to a minimum
“I’d see five legal conferences on various days. I would have to look at page 18 and page 27 or whatever to be sure the legal conference appeared on the same day for each attorney involved. It was a terrible waste of time, said Bonnabeau.

“With TimeSolv, the activities have been automatically broken out into the respective client bills. The “Legal Conferences” are coordinated on the same page next to the same entry. I can make any changes as necessary, and then all it takes is to hit a print key and the bills print. That takes a half hour, if that.”

“TimeSolv is extremely reliable and keeps getting better and better with additional functionality. In the last few months, we have been especially pleased with Spell Check for the Notes section where attorneys record what they did in that period of time. The person who then runs the bill isn’t finding spelling errors. It reduces the likelihood of getting garbage in.”

Tracking the firm
Yet, as the first named attorney on the firm, the biggest advantage to Bonnabeau is the instant overview to track how everyone is doing rather than a single opportunity each month to review. “Before discovering TimeSolv we didn’t know a good month from a bad month. Now at any given moment at any given time, I can log in, see what everyone is working on and create multiple reports for analysis on productivity. What clients have been billed? What clients have paid? It’s a quick, easy, useable system. It’s like electronic access to a bank account rather than a surprise at the end of the month. If I learn that someone’s billed only 20 hours, I have to ask what’s going on there so we can react and resolve it before days or weeks pass.

“Also, as a cash basis firm we are taxed on what we’ve received. I can just run those numbers and give it to the accountant.”

As with most processes, adoption is critical. The ease and efficiencies of using TimeSolv make quick adoption highly probable; however, as Bob Doe stated, “if we had an attorney who did not record entries regularly, it would seriously impede the efficiencies of the system to the firm.”

Conclusion
Revenues have steadily increased in the time frame the firm has used TimeSolv Legal and continuing with Excel spreadsheets and Word documents for time tracking sooner or later would have had a material impact on the firm. Reconstructing the week was eating time more fruitfully applied elsewhere. Training is nearly unnecessary. All timekeepers met at one time for 30 minutes of on-line training in my office, and TimeSolv has always made available a knowledgeable support person throughout the years, said Bonnabeau. “I would recommend TimeSolv. It’s pretty darn easy. In one half hour, we were set to run it. You log on to your Internet access. Enter password. Bam. You are there.”

Visit the TimeSolv Homepage today and make time and billing happen for you as automatically as possible. While you are there, make sure to register for a 30-day free trial at: http://www.timesolv.com or call USA 1-800-715-1284.

Reference
You Manage law News letter