Modern Family Law Firm helps clients resolve conflicts through innovation and technology. Their mission is to help people start over with integrity and compassion. Their whole team is built around the idea of helping clients successfully come through their family law case with the best shot at a fresh start. With close to 20 attorneys in Colorado and California, Modern Family Law truly embraces the idea of how to run a modern law firm using technology to leverage efficiencies.
The Situation
Modern Family Law has provided legal solutions for families since 1994. Prior to using TimeSolv, the firm had evolved to using a sustaining or evergreen retainer. The client posts money into a trust account, the firm billed their hours, took money out of the trust account and the client was asked to reimburse the trust account back up to the original amount of the retainer. “It was a labor-intensive process, you have to develop a lot of processes to help facilitate that work,” says Modern Family Law CEO David Johnson. Johnson acknowledges it was a tough change moving from a traditional retainer to the evergreen retainer model but says it was worth the effort once they fully moved to that method sixseven years ago. “Once you get past the initial stage, and you are basically using the retainer as a sustainable or evergreen retainer, your cashflow is hugely impacted because you get the money from the trust account directly.”
One huge benefit Modern Family Law saw was the advanced notice when a client fell behind. Johnson explains, “If you have a $3,000 retainer and you bill $2,000, but the client can’t replenish the retainer back up to $3,000 you have an opportunity before you get in the red to work with the client, before your AR begins to accumulate.” While this process improved cashflow immensely, there was still the issue of waiting for clients to replenish their trust accounts. There was still little control over that factor.
About Modern Family Law
Modern Family Law Firm helps clients resolve conflicts through innovation and technology. Their mission is to help people start over with integrity and compassion. Their whole team is built around the idea of helping clients successfully come through their family law case with the best shot at a fresh start. With close to 20 attorneys in Colorado and California, Modern Family Law truly embraces the idea of how to run a modern law firm using technology to leverage efficiencies.
Lawyers are made to be accountable for every dollar of their clients funds held in trust accounts. TimeSolv helps you easily manage this money in separate ledgers under each specific matter. This helps ensure that client money does not get mixed up with the firm’s assets.
TimeSolv’s Trust Request feature means you can even share requests online for funds, allowing your clients to make deposits into their trust accounts immediately using credit cards. This process speeds up your cash flow significantly.
The Solution
When Modern Law moved to TimeSolv for their time and billing software, they immediately asked about moving to automating the replenishment of the retainer by having clients post a credit card or ACH information on file with them. They can then automatically run that credit card or ACH payment to replenish the retainer. With TimeSolv’s integration with both LexCharge and LawPay, it was easy to enter and view payment information in TimeSolv while it was hosted by a full PCICompliant payment processor.
They then modified their fee arrangement to include language that the client had three days to review the bill and then would automatically process the payment if there were no objections. While this arrangement was a huge step forward in allowing Modern Family Law to control when they received payment, there were drawbacks. “We send out hundreds of invoices each month and it was time-consuming to run a payment on those invoices one at a time,” says Johnson. With Modern Family Law’s guidance, TimeSolv built a unique process that allows them and other firms to run payment for a large volume of invoices with one click. Now instead of hours to collect on several hundred invoices, Modern Family can process those payments in seconds.
Johnson also states they are now able to move from the evergreen retainer model to taking a retainer payment purely as a security deposit and something they don’t require from every client. Then the trust account is used only if the client can’t pay their bill. This becomes a true pay as you go process. “You no longer have to go through and do the trust accounting for every single thing, you only have to worry about the ones who couldn’t make payment or their cards were rejected. It simplifies the process for our accounting team,” says Johnson. “And then there’s the real reason that we’re doing it is because it’s better for the clients, because if I have a client who pays their bills, and they pay all their bills, why do I want a $10,000 retainer from that person?” This new model on how to collect payment has led Modern Family Law to achieve a 97% collection rate on their sent invoices, virtually eliminating AR.
Results and Benefits
“One huge benefit Modern Family Law saw was the advanced notice when a client fell behind. Johnson explains, “If you have a $3,000 retainer and you bill $2,000, but the client can’t replenish the retainer back up to $3,000 you have an opportunity before you get in the red to work with the client, before your AR begins to accumulate.”
Conclusion
TimeSolv listened when Modern Family Law expressed a desire to not only be able to collect payment information but to run those payments in bulk, saving enormous time and energy. We knew quickly this was a concept all firms who bill traditionally and have to deal with trust accounts could adapt to and realize a much higher collection rate on invoices.
