With clients requiring predictability in their legal bills, and attorneys expected to generate cost-effective business, it’s time for solo and small firms to become efficient in non-billable tasks. This is not a case of working harder than you already are, it’s a case of being able to work smarter. This means relying on technology to help you handle mundane administrative tasks. Efficiency results in loyal relationships with clients, repeat business, and profitability. Here are some legal billing tips to avoid the frustration of not getting paid on time and getting compensated for your costly time. There are some steps you can take to ensure the entire legal billing process for your firm runs smoothly.
Set expectations
When discussing your services with clients you should also be providing information on the value of your time spent on these services. By having these discussions, you can tally the client’s expectations with the firms. This should produce a written fee agreement with details of billing procedures, expectations of tasks to be completed, the fees and expenses relating to those tasks, and any consequences of late payments.
When creating transparency from the start over your legal billing process you can expect fewer chances of disputes and confusion. This will result in happier clients and repeat business for your firm. Clients like predictability, and predictability from the outset will make it so much easier for you when its time to collect money.
Time tracking
Time tracking is often associated as a mundane and tedious task for attorneys charging by the hour. The key is to log time immediately so there is no room for inaccuracies and add as much details as possible to the time entry so that all translates automatically onto the bills as an explanation on tasks worked on and consequent charges against those. To do this you need to have the right tools in place, which is a robust law practice management app that will help you track your time and generate bills against entries.
Apps such as TimeSolv will allow you to access time tracking tools online or offline, remotely from different devices, ensuring you never skip a beat and end up capturing less time than actually spent. Never lose another minute of your time because recording every minute means more revenue.
Describe billable time
Be as transparent as possible in legal invoices to clearly describe where all your time was spent that you are billing clients for. Describe the work that you performed for them and be as descriptive and void of legal jargon as you can to help clients understand. For example, if you revised a document explain what that entailed, i.e. it included research and new information added. If you attended a meeting, provide details of what happened in that meeting for the duration claimed. The more detailed your descriptions are the more likely clients will feel comfortable in paying for your services as they will feel they are aware of where the resources were spent for the written costs.
Flexible payment methods
Offering as many payment alternatives can only garner quicker income for your firm when you cater to each client’s individual needs. Multiple payment methods are important in this day in age when clients expect options. Not being able to provide options will reflect negatively in the reputation of the firm or will result in delayed payments.
Any firm not accepting credit cards will most probably be having problems with collecting money on time. It’s so easy to set up methods to accept credit card payments, and there are legal billing apps out there that will integrate with LawPay, accepting credit card payments. TimeSolv empowers its clients by teaming up with LawPay, AffiniPay, and CPACharge to accept credit card and ACH payment processes. With the addition of a client portal, clients can easily and interpedently view their payments, invoices, trust account details, and work in progress.
In a small or solo firm setting there are fewer resources there to contribute towards the business side of things. The best way to overcome such limited resources is to allow technology to help you in the best way possible, by making your administrative tasks quicker, easier, automated, efficient and effective. This will open up more time for you to spend your efforts towards earning money.
