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Top 8 Benefits of Time-Tracking Software for Attorneys
You know many attorneys at your firm are burning the midnight oil. But the questions law firms have to ask are two-fold: how long is everyone really working, and how can we support our attorneys to more easily track their hours?
It starts with giving every attorney and paralegal the clearest possible picture of their time, especially their billable hours.
If firm leaders don’t have an understanding of how team members are spending their time, your revenue could be in trouble. You need this information to understand where the firm is thriving (because it’s always important to know what you’re doing well!) and where there’s room for improvement.
But that’s just the big-picture-30,000-foot-view benefit of time-tracking software for attorneys. There are so many micro benefits as well. Let’s dig in.
1. Save time and resources
This may be the most important benefit of time-tracking software. Part of your job as a leader of a law firm is to make attorneys’ jobs as frictionless as possible.
If lawyers are jotting down their hours on sticky notes, it’s taking up time and energy—as opposed to starting the clock on their time-tracking software with a click.
Another benefit of time-tracking software is that everything is in one place whenever an attorney wants to review their hours.
What’s more, best-in-class time-tracking software will be mobile-integrated so that when your employees are out on their iPhones or Androids, time tracking goes with them.
2. Capture more time
Especially if you’re a firm with tight profit margins, using time-tracking software can mean the difference between being in the red or the black any given month.
When attorneys don’t use automatic software, they may rely on calendars, notepads, Post-its, or Excel. These strategies have some benefits (well, maybe not Post-its), but they come with downsides.
And one of the biggest downsides is an associated delay in logging hours.
Without automatic time-tracking, attorneys may wait until the end of the day to record their hours, and that leads to lost revenue. According to the American Bar Association, lawyers who wait until the end of the day to record their time lose 10–15% of their billable hours, and those who wait until the end of the week lose 25%.
These numbers are sobering because they add up fast. The potential losses can reach thousands of dollars per week per attorney—a loss you can’t afford.
3. Greater efficiency
Time-tracking software gives attorneys access to their analytics on time spent per task.
Simply by assigning a label when they start a task—such as “client intake call,” “case review,” or “writing brief”—attorneys can later analyze how much time they spent on each category of work. This may lead to the insight that they are spending too much time on client phone calls or not enough time taking breaks.
Most critically, attorneys can analyze their total billable and non-billable time. These data points are important metrics at many firms, and time-tracking software allows lawyers to monitor their progress and adjust workloads as needed.
4. Identify your best performers
Likewise, many firms use billable hours as a benchmark for associates, and of course, it’s a stat that can help determine who will rise in leadership. With time-tracking software, your firm always knows which attorneys bring in the most billable revenue.
In contrast, when certain associates are lagging in billable hours, you can easily track their progress and work with them to raise their numbers.
Demystifying the Billable Hour: How to Right-Size Your Rates
With prices rising so much over the last year (global inflation is forecasted at 8.8% in 2022), it’s the right time to look at your current rates and see if you’re charging enough to remain profitable.
5. Increase revenue with firm-wide analytics
Even more critical, attorney time-tracking software gives you access to a dashboard of analytics. This is key because you’ll be able to see firm-wide stats such as:
- Highest-revenue clients
- Least-profitable clients
- Billable time vs. non-billable time, firm-wide
- Compare time spent on various tasks (brief writing vs. client calls)
With firm-wide information like this, you can analyze how attorneys are spending time. You might notice that the balance of billable vs. non-billable time was out of whack for a month, prompting you to investigate why and come up with informed solutions for discrepancies.
Just as important, access to these analytics helps you determine which clients you want to continue to work with and which types of projects to repeat or avoid in the future.
6. Reinforce the value of work-life balance
Top-line revenue is key, but to get to healthy revenue, we all need to take consistent breaks to maintain our wellness.
Time-tracking software allows attorneys to start a break with just a click. Without automatic time-tracking, as you know, any of us may sit with eyes glued to the laptop for two and a half hours with little to show for it. As many of us know, there may be consequences for that in terms of productivity later in the day.
In contrast, time-tracking helps remind us that —“Oh! The hour is here”— and indeed, it’s time to head to the fridge to open that yogurt.
7. Integrate with invoicing
Best-of-breed time-tracking software also saves your firm hours every month on invoicing. That’s because hours spent on client matters get automatically populated to client invoicing. There’s even batch billing, allowing you to create multiple client invoices at once.
Batch billing is a semi-automated process that allows you to generate multiple invoices simultaneously. Instead of manually inputting the same information into individual invoices, batch billing saves time by assigning similar products, services, or quantities to groups or types of customers all at once.
What’s more, when time-tracking is integrated with invoicing, it gives clients peace of mind. They will have a breakdown of all tasks performed on the invoice so they never have to guess how the time was spent, saving you confusion down the line.
8. Integrate with expenses
Another benefit of time-tracking software is simple expense tracking, along with integration with expense management.
When you’re out on field research for a client and have to buy lunch, there is a place in Rocket Matter’s mobile app to simply add expense information. In fact, all you do is choose “expense” instead of “time.” The same is true on the desktop application.
That’s just the start. All of your expenses sync easily with QuickBooks Online, so keeping track of the cost of doing business is simple.
Rocket Matter delivers all these benefits and more
If you’ve had issues with time management at your firm or you’re looking for a revenue boost, it’s an excellent time to consider giving best-in-class time-tracking software a try so that you never lose track of a billable hour again.
Rocket Matter offers your firm a legal-specific solution that delivers all of the benefits explained here and has the power to transform how you do business. Our customers have said “my timekeeping woes are a thing of the past.”
Sign up for your free demo of Rocket Matter and learn how to increase revenue, evaluate performance, and integrate invoicing and expenses easily with the most powerful time-tracking software on the market.
Demystifying the Billable Hour: How to Right-Size Your Rates
With prices rising so much over the last year (global inflation is forecasted at 8.8% in 2022), it’s the right time to look at your current rates and see if you’re charging enough to remain profitable.
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