There are plenty of famous lines about time: Time is money, time waits for no one, time is on your side… For law firms, any one of these can be true, depending on how you manage your billing practices.
If you’ve fine-tuned your processes and your team is effectively tracking and managing their time, then time is probably on your side and making you money.
But, if you’re using antiquated time management processes and not up to date with the latest tech, your time to become profitable could be running out.
To provide busy legal professionals with a chance to capitalize on their most valuable resource (that is, time), we’re sharing our top tips and tricks for mastering your billing processes and ensuring that your firm can achieve its profitability goals.
Don’t rely on memory for tracking time
It’s a tale as old as time: You spend your working week knee-deep in client meetings, court appearances, and phone calls, and by the time the end of the week rolls around, you’re stuck in the office trying to remember the hours you spent on the work you’ve done.
Tracking your time this way isn’t really tracking at all—it’s guesswork, and leaving the details of your billable time up to guesswork opens you up to input errors that could affect your bottom line.
With TimeSolv’s time-tracking software, you’ll never have to worry about whether or not you’re billing your clients accurately because every second of your billable time will be accounted for.
Our software allows you to track your time from anywhere at any time with the click of a button. You can also run multiple timers simultaneously, easily switching between them so you never lose a second of billable time.
Schedule regular time audits
Just as important as effectively tracking your time is checking up on how that time is being spent. Scheduling regular time audits can be a great way to discover any issues with underbilling or find areas where your efficiency can level up.
With TimeSolv’s reporting capabilities, you can run comprehensive reports on more than just your time entries—you can also get a deep dive into your accounting processes, invoicing and payments, project management, and overall firm performance.
With this invaluable information on your side, you’re empowered to make data-driven decisions to keep your firm on the path to profitability.
FREE Legal Billing Terms Cheat Sheet
Legal billing terms can be confusing.
TimeSolv has prepared a list of the most commonly used legal billing terms that lawyers use in routine. It's a must to have it in your pinned files, sticky notes, or however you carry your essentials while practicing.
Download our cheat sheet and get all the information you need!
Use custom invoices
If you’re manually invoicing your clients, a huge chunk of your time gets spent reviewing itemized invoices with a fine-toothed comb, trying to make sure that all of the numbers are correct before sending them off to your clients to get paid.
The trouble with billing and invoicing this way is that it bogs you down in non-billable busywork instead of allowing you to get back to working with your clients.
When you use TimeSolv’s custom invoicing solution, you can create your invoices from customized templates, cutting out all the time that invoice generation requires.
Our software also allows you to create batch invoices and send them to clients with similar matters simultaneously. You can also generate unlimited invoices for clients with the same line times and use automation tools like recurring invoices.
Leverage better client communication tools
We all know that catering to every client’s need can be a tall order—back-and-forth emails, anxious phone calls, and questions about invoices are just a few of the tasks you need to juggle to keep your clients happy.
While it’s essential to maintain consistent communication with your clients, there’s a lot of information that can be shared more efficiently without risking the client experience. We’re talking about secure client portals.
TimeSolv empowers your clients with the ability to find the answers they need by simply logging in to our client portal. With this tool, they can view their invoices, payment history, and trust balances whenever they choose, and they can even check the details of any work in progress with their matters.
Ready to amp up your legal billing processes?
If you’re trying to squeeze more hours out of the day or wondering how you always end up underbilling your clients, it’s time to switch to a solution that eliminates guesswork and increases your efficiency.
From custom invoices and batch billing to get you paid promptly and without headaches to automatic time-tracking solutions to ensure that every second of billable time is accounted for, TimeSolv has the tools you need to take your billing and invoicing processes to the next level.
Ready to see what TimeSolv can do for you? Sign up for your free trial today.
Legal billing FAQs
How does accurate time tracking contribute to efficient legal billing?
Accurate time tracking is essential for an efficient legal billing process. If you wait until the end of the week to log your hours, you’ll waste billable time trying to recall all the details. By using a time-tracking solution, you won’t need to worry about what you did, when you did it, or how long you did it because the details will be waiting for you on our platform.
Additionally, using the right time-tracking tools significantly contributes to the efficiency of your billing. The right time-tracking solution can track time anywhere thanks to cloud-based capabilities, but it can also track your work when you’re offline. You should also be able to track work across multiple timers, saving you the effort of switching back and forth.
What strategic billing practices can legal professionals adopt to enhance client relationships and financial outcomes?
If you want to foster healthy client relationships and positively impact your bottom line at the same time, there are several strategies you can employ. Take these two, for example.
- Communication solutions: Communicating clearly and regularly with your clients about their cases’ progress can help manage expectations and build trust, making potential disputes about invoicing and billing less likely. If you don’t have enough time to handle all your client communication, you can use a secure client portal to give your clients access to all the details of their matters so that no question goes unanswered.
- Adopt flexible payment options: The paper check is slowly going the way of the dinosaur.
More and more people expect to be able to pay online with credit cards, and if you’re not providing them with that option, potential clients might go with someone who will. By using tools like TimeSolvPay to accept credit card and ACH payments online, you’ll make things convenient for your clients and get paid faster. We call that a win-win.
FREE Legal Billing Terms Cheat Sheet
Legal billing terms can be confusing.
TimeSolv has prepared a list of the most commonly used legal billing terms that lawyers use in routine. It's a must to have it in your pinned files, sticky notes, or however you carry your essentials while practicing.
Download our cheat sheet and get all the information you need!
