It is no secret that entering time is one of
law firm attorneys' biggest headaches. It is even less of a secret
to those running the firms that attorneys often miss capturing
valuable time because they are not entering all of their work
in a timely and accurate fashion. It is very easy, for example,
for an attorney to forget a 15-minute call with a client while
heading to the office. If you do the math, one lost 15-minute
call per attorney per day can result in substantial lost revenue:
$150 per hour x 50 weeks x 5 days = $9,375. And that is for only
one attorney.
Calls on the road are historically the hardest to track, but now
I do not miss any of them. More importantly, with the calls fresh
in my mind, the descriptions are better, which makes my clients
happier
- Peter Maretz, Stakeholder Fortunately, technology vendors are recognizing
the changes to work styles and are working together to create
products that enable attorneys to capture time remotely. As a
result, more financial management solutions on the desktop are
coupling with remote time capture software installed on the types
of devices that attorneys use most: BlackBerry and Palm Treo.
“Whether expense reports or time entry, the further you
get from the event, the more time you lose,” said Alex Raugust,
IT Director for 39-attorney firm Shea Stokes & Carter. The firm
conducted a successful two-week pilot program with three of its
attorneys and then rolled out to other attorneys using BlackBerry
devices two weeks later. The results: so far, so good.
“Now, attorneys talking on the phone in
their cars, for example, can seamlessly send billable time into
our financial management software right after they hang up,”
Raugust said. “As a result, they can increase time entry
for the same amount of work. Even a few minutes of extra time
captured each day will make a big difference in the financial
future of our firm, which will definitely please our partners.”
During the pilot program, the firm worked with
AIRTIME-Manager to determine “thresholds” and “accumulations”
and set up a favorites list of matters that an attorney has worked
on during the preceding two to three months. For example, after
one minute on a phone call or two minutes on an e-mail, the remote
time capture software will prompt the attorney to enter a bill
code or pick a matter from the “favorites” list. If
an attorney has a series of calls within a week that are all under
the threshold, those go into the accumulator, where the software
will give a prompt once they collectively reach the one-minute
threshold. These thresholds can be customized for each firm.
The attorney clicks on the matter and can then enter a description
of the work. If the attorney wants to spend even less time, the
software has pre-penned text that can be used as the description
to jog the memory later. “I have only been using the time
capture software for a few weeks, but I can already tell that
I am recording more billable time overall,” said Peter Maretz,
a shareholder at Shea Stokes. “Calls on the road are historically
the hardest to track, but now I do not miss any of them. More
importantly, with the calls fresh in my mind, the descriptions
are better, which makes my clients happier.”
As for training, each attorney had individual
phone calls with the vendor to walk them through the process.
“It was a huge help for us, as we did not have to spend
time getting up to speed on the product, so we could train them
ourselves,” Raugust said.
The bottom line: providing attorneys with tools
like AIRTIME saves money while providing an easy and effective
way to capture time accurately and quickly, both in the office
and out, so they can have more time for billable work.
For more information how AIRTIME can save your
firm money, call us at 877.247.4464 or visit us at www.airtimemanager.com.
