![]() ![]() Use What You HaveĪlmost every practice management application has some way to track time, often with a stopwatch system that lets you identify the client and start/stop a clock for billable work. Time management is a process that you have to work on, do not be discouraged when you have to reset and try again. Obviously, unexpected and unscheduled tasks will still plague you, but you can at least attempt to take some control. Try to schedule your time in blocks and anticipate what your day will bring. Let the calls go to voicemail, have a receptionist take a message, or ask a paralegal to respond. One way to reduce the madness is to review your daily calendar and then set up your day using the Pomodoro method to help you focus on one task at a time. ![]() With so many distractions, it is incredibly difficult to effectively and contemporaneously track time on any task. When you are finally back in the office, after responding to a few more calls and emails, you settle back to finish the email. You save the email in draft, re-read the interrogatories, and hop in the car. Once your call is complete, you go back to drafting the email only to have your calendar alert you that it is time to go to a deposition. You set aside the email and discuss a matter with your client. You may be responding to an email when the phone rings. One barrier to effectively tracking time is the number of tasks an attorney may be attempting to complete at any given moment. It can help you decide whether or not you are spending too much time on tasks that can be automated or outsourced. Tracking time for flat fee matters will help you determine whether you are effectively pricing your work. Second, successful fixed fees have a basis, and that basis is often time spent. First, if a bill is disputed sometimes the only measurement a court will consider is a time log. Either way, your billing may not accurately reflect reality.įor lawyers who charge flat fees, alternative fees, or subscription fees and may not track time, there are a few reasons to consider recording it. Conversely, it is often posited by legal tech companies and management gurus that lawyers lose money when they don’t efficiently track time. According to an article in the Lawyerist, Viewabill, a service that allows clients to see what their lawyers bill in real time, says that waiting until the end of the month to record your time means you are probably overbilling your clients by about 23%. It is crucial to track your time as close to “as it happens” as possible. But how?Ī study published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that people overestimate how much they worked by 5-50% when asked how much they worked the previous week. This should serve as a cautionary tale and a New Year’s resolution to track your time more effectively. The attorney did not keep contemporaneous track of her time in the billing system but instead tried to recreate records based on notes. ![]() While by all accounts, she was an excellent lawyer and her clients were happy with her work, the methods she used to create her time entries were “inadequate, careless, rushed and error-prone” according to the decision by Justice Frank Gaziano of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Recently a partner at a firm in Boston was suspended for overbilling. ![]()
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