At the end of every month there is a mad rush at law firms. Attorneys are scrambling to reconstruct their month, billing is scrambling to get out pre-bills on time and the management is scrambling to figure out how to speed the whole process up!

Many attorneys feel that as long as the time gets in by the end of the month everything is fine and billing should be able to take care of it. They use tools like Outlook or a Time Capture software to help figure out where they spent all of their time. At best this is a painstaking process for the attorneys and at worst it is an inaccurate depiction for the clients and a nightmare for a billing department already overtaxed.

Many attorneys will not enter their own time. They scribble down some notes and hand them over to their legal secretaries periodically to enter it for them. If asked why they do it this way the answers can vary from "that is the way I've always done it" to "it is too much of a pain for me to learn to do it myself" to "that is not what I am paid $$$$ per hour to do." If attorneys are not willing, or able, to enter their own time quickly and easily then it will most likely not be entered daily leading to all of the issues mentioned above. It is also nearly impossible to institute any real time entry policy at a firm that cannot get their lawyers to enter time.

Lastly there is the holy grail of time entry which is having it done contemporaneously. In my opinion this is the only way that time entry should be done in order for it to be accurate for the client and the firm. Billing departments will run more smoothly. Data for things like pricing and budgets will be more accurate and be able to be pulled real time. There will be far less end of month crunch time and stress on the firm all around.

Everyone in firm management realizes this at some level. I believe the issue is that the communication of its importance has not gotten its way to the attorneys. The other issue is that time entry should be a able to be done easily and securely from any device anywhere that has an internet connection. The experience should be the same on an attorneys phone as it is on their tablet or desktop. It has to be so easy that it doesn't require training to use or the adoption just won't be there.

To solve this problem that exists at almost every law firm in the country regardless of size it will take two things. A willingness of attorneys to change the way they are recording time for the benefit of both the client and the firm, and the technology to help make that happen.

At Bellefield we are constantly working on the technology side and have ideas on some best practices for time entry. I am also open to any feedback or ideas anyone else has to share on the subject.