The end of the year is a great time to take stock of the processes at your firm, assess where they’re falling short, and discover what changes to make to surge ahead in 2024. Top oft mind for many law firms is how to work better.
By “working better,” we don’t mean performing the highly skilled legal tasks you went to school for. We mean the day-in-day-out processes of managing tasks, time, and resources. Legal work is highly detailed and time-sensitive.
If not approached correctly, these qualities can create an environment of bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and declining profitability.
Efficient and profitable approaches to work don’t require a secret password to unlock. In this article, TimeSolv will share eight strategies for working better—and getting better results.
1. Streamline project management
If you’re looking for ways to maximize your billable hours, the first place to start is with project management processes. Together with your team, assess what runs smoothly and where they’re experiencing workflow issues.
Once you have a clear understanding of what processes need to be improved, you can come up with new strategies for improvement. Some examples might include:
- Set up repeatable task templates to make starting new client work easier
- Identify tasks that can be automated to reduce manual effort
- Review areas of work that could be outsourced to skilled professionals (i.e., bookkeeping or web development)
2. Harness new time-tracking technology
The cornerstone of efficient billing is accurately tracked time, and the most accurate way to do this is to track time while working. However, many attorne
Making tracking time in real-time a requirement for your team will lead to fewer hours spent on non-billable tasks. In turn, this minimizes costs and time leakage.
3. Delegate strategically
If you’re leading a team, it can feel challenging to keep all of the balls in the air—this is an area where strategic delegation can be a lifesaver.
Assess your team’s strengths and weaknesses and match tasks to the individuals with the requisite skills. This saves billable hours and helps ensure you have the right people responsible for the right tasks.
When you have tasks correctly delegated, you give team members tasks that they’re the most likely to excel at. As a result, they’ll perform better and more efficiently. This should also free up time for other team members to focus on their areas of skill and experience.
Delegation can also involve outsourcing time-consuming administrative tasks like bookkeeping and marketing. Choosing outside legal bookkeeping and marketing services helps you lower your employment costs, benefit from the specialized experience of other professionals, and focus more of your time on billable hours.
4. Set realistic billing targets
We all want to shoot for success, but it’s important to set goals that are achievable. Establishing realistic billing targets will provide you with a roadmap for the future.
For example, setting a goal of increasing your billable hours by 90% next year is a target that won’t be easy to meet; moreover, it isn’t specific about how the goal can be achieved.
Instead of setting lofty goals without clear aims for individual team members, try incorporating something like these specified billing targets:
- 1600–1800 billable hours per year for junior associates
- 1800–2000 billable hours per year for mid-level associates
- 1800 – 2200 billable hours per year for senior associates and partners
When you have specific targets for your billable hours, you can track the performance of your entire team and have a clear picture of where things are going well and where things need to improve during your yearly review process.
The Ultimate Guide to Automating Your Legal Billing and Payments
To stay competitive in today’s legal landscape, law firms must embrace the power of technology, especially when it comes to billing and payments.
The best way to improve your law firm’s cash flow while also increasing client convenience is 'Automation'.
Download our free guide to improve your legal billing and payment process today!
5. Conduct regular performance reviews
No matter how many high performers or rainmakers you have at your firm, there are always opportunities to level up. Conduct regular performance reviews to ensure continued success.
However, conducting performance reviews is often easier said than done. You can reduce the burden of performance reviews by taking the following steps:
- Identify clear metrics for attorneys and legal staff
- Set up dashboards in your practice management software to track performance
- Establish a regular cadence of meetings to check in before the official performance review
- Encourage feedback from attorneys and legal staff—your law firm’s performance as an employer matters!
Note that billable time can—and should—be one aspect of performance reviews. Make sure, though, to take a holistic look at team performance.
6. Foster healthy client relationships
Cultivating productive client relationships is a strategic investment that can yield powerful results—and maximize your billable hours in 2024.
Take a proactive approach to client communication. The easier you make it to understand the status of their legal work, the more confident they’ll feel in your services.
You don’t have to lose billable time to do this, though. Investing in a secure client portal makes things convenient for your clients without adding work. A great software solution will allow your clients to:
- Pay their invoices online
- View their trust account balances
- Check details of any work currently in progress
7. Embrace legal technology
While you can implement plenty of these strategies in your firm without the help of technology, you can take your billable hours to new heights when you embrace the right legal software.
Precise time tracking
Effective time-tracking is essential for maximizing your billable hours, and the right time-tracking solution will provide you with multiple timers that allow you to track your time accurately and effectively from the minute you start on any task.
Streamlined project management
Utilizing a project management platform will provide you and your team with a centralized hub for managing projects, milestones, communication channels, and task assignments—giving you up-to-the-minute knowledge on the progress of all your projects.
Invoicing shortcuts
Invoicing can be an incredibly time-consuming process that eats into hours of billable time. Leveraging invoicing tools like flexible billing templates, batch billing, and online payments will allow you to invoice clients faster and get paid faster.
Quick and easy document creation and management
An excellent practice management solution will provide you with fast and efficient document creation and management through automation, so your team can streamline document-related tasks and save time.
The best document management solutions will allow you to store your information securely in the cloud so that nothing ever gets lost in the shuffle and sensitive data stays protected.
8. Accelerate your billable time in 2024 with TimeSolv
If you’re looking for ways to increase your efficiency and maximize your billable time in the new year, you’ll need robust tools to help you take your processes to the next level.
From billing and invoicing solutions that help you take the time crunch out of trying to get paid to workflow automations and document management systems that take the heavy lifting out of your administrative processes, TimeSolv will let you maximize your billable hours in 2024 and beyond.
Ready to see how TimeSolv can get your firm more billable hours? Sign up for a free trial today!
The Ultimate Guide to Automating Your Legal Billing and Payments
To stay competitive in today’s legal landscape, law firms must embrace the power of technology, especially when it comes to billing and payments.
The best way to improve your law firm’s cash flow while also increasing client convenience is 'Automation'.
Download our free guide to improve your legal billing and payment process today!
