LawBillity Guide to Making Attorney Time Tracking Work for You
According to the 2021 Legal Trends report, lawyers spend roughly 31% of their day doing billable work—which means they spend 69% of their time on non-billable tasks. When it comes to time tracking for lawyers, you’re not alone if your firm’s rates are less than stellar. Utilization rates show room for improvement industry-wide. In 2020, the average lawyer billed 2.5 hours (31.25%) of an 8-hour day. Realization rates were similarly low—only 84% of billable hours actually made it to a client bill.
Why do these attorney time tracking problems happen?
Experts cite several reasons that firms struggle to close these gaps, even with the best legal time tracking software at their disposal:
- Many lawyers don’t have enough clients to fill their day
- Some struggle with inefficiencies in their firm that distract from billable work, and
- Others underestimate the time tasks will actually take them to complete, which then makes them hesitant to charge clients for all the time they spend on billable work.
How do we fix it?
The solution is simple: improve your utilization rate. Think about how much a 5-10% boost would impact your bottom line, and then make sure your legal time tracking software can get you there.
