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For many attorneys, time is a precious resource. There are only so many hours in the day, so the key to improving firm productivity is often not through working longer, but through working smarter. With that in mind, here are three simple ways attorneys can increase their firm’s productivity.
1. Reduce the Need for Expensive Support Staff
In the past, attorneys in law firms depended on all kinds of support staff to do the non-legal work necessary to the firm’s work:
- filing records
- taking messages
- proofreading for spelling and grammatical errors
- typing and inputting edits
- making physical submissions to the court
For many of these tasks, automation has provided attorneys with the ability to complete these tasks without having to hire expensive support staff. There may be areas in your firm which you can automatize and save you from having to hire a non-billable employee.
Billing, expense tracking, invoicing and internal reporting are all tasks that can be automated through software like TimeSolv, reducing the need for expensive support staff, and increasing your firm’s productivity.
2. Incorporate Project Management Software Solutions
While the larger corporate culture has learned to be leaner and meaner, law firms have often been slow to adapt to productivity trends. After all, you went to law school, not business school, right? One area this is true is in incorporating project management tools.
Most law firms simply divide up work on projects among associates, and no one knows what progress is being made or how many allotted hours are being billed until way too late in the project. This can lead to scrambling to finish up work, difficult negotiations with the client for a higher bill, and non-billable hours that the law firm has to eat in order to finish the project over-budget.
TimeSolv includes project management software that lets everyone on the team track their progress and hours as they go, while providing channels of communication throughout the group at all times.
3. Outsource Your Legal Billing to a Low-Priced Provider
Most attorneys will agree that taking the time to bill clients for their work is one of their least favorite parts of the job. Not only can it be tedious after a long day of legal work, but the time spent working through your legal billing is time that is not billable. Regardless of your billing rate, any time you’re spending billing clients instead of legal work is cutting into your productivity.
By outsourcing your legal billing to a low-priced, outside provider, you can minimize your non-billable hours and free yourself from busy work. At one low monthly rate, TimeSolv will allocate charges, create bills, and send bills to customers. All you need to do is enter your time, approve the bills, and receive the payments.