Accurate time tracking has always been a challenge for law practices, but the benefits are undeniable. Clients love accurate billing with notes regarding each task completed on their case. Law firms benefit from a clear view of how their associate and legal aid time is spent and gain insights on how to improve efficiency. However, keeping accurate time records is well known to be both time-consuming and prone to human error.
How can law firms overcome the challenges of accurate legal time tracking while reaping the rewards of both precise billable hours and task efficiency data? The key lies in these eight best practices for accurate legal time tracking.
1) Record Billable Hours as You Work Them
First, keep track of tasks when they are performed. The American Bar Association reports that lawyers who wait until end-of-day to record their time typically under-bill at 10-15%, while lawyers who wait 24 hours or more may lose up to 25% of their time by under-estimating the total time spent on each case, including little tasks and phone calls.
To protect the value of your time and your law firm revenue, it is important to note the time when you start and end tasks and keep track of short tasks that will add to the total billable hours. Just recording time promptly can save your firm thousands of dollars a week in previously lost billable hours.
2) Align Your Work with Your Schedule, When Possible
It’s easier to audit your time tracking data if your work aligns with your schedule. Build an agenda that provides an appropriate time budget that includes all the casework tasks to be done each day and week. This gives you a framework and sticking to that schedule, when possible, can make it easier both to enter accurate time records and to make slight corrections if your records do not exactly align with your activities later.
You can use your schedule as a point of reference. While it’s not always possible for a busy lawyer to stick to their planned agenda, the schedule provides a baseline. Tasks and task transitions that occur on time fit neatly into time records and interruptions can also be noted in the calendar for later record accuracy.
3) Use an App to Quickly Switch Between Cases and Tasks
Task switching presents the greatest challenge for accurate legal time tracking. This can create many micro time entries that interrupt a larger block of work, such as taking phone calls in the middle of drafting a contract.
The best solution is an app that makes it easy to quickly switch which task a lawyer is tracking time for with a single tap. The right time tracking app applies a simple stopwatch function and pairs with a list of active cases so that lawyers can easily record their total time spent on each case without having to manually create a new time record each time they switch to and from a task.
4) Tally Up Fixed-Fee Tasks
Fixed-fee tasks are services provided by a law firm that are billed by the service, not the hour. For lawyers who complete fixed-fee tasks, their time is still valuable, and each task should be individually tracked. Keep a tally of fixed-fee tasks completed. Time tracking the time it takes to complete fixed-fee tasks can also help the law firm more accurately price each service based on the average amount of time required for associates or legal teams to complete each type of task for clients.
5) Record Your Administrative Time
Billable hours aren’t the only tasks that benefit from time tracking. Like fixed-fee tasks, administrative time and other non-billable activities can still provide valuable information when law firms track the time spent on them. While not billable, these time records provide insight into how much time is spent on administrative and non-billable activities.
These tasks are necessary and uphold the functionality of the firm. Therefore, valuable insights can be gained by understanding how long these tasks take, who is performing administrative tasks for the firm, and which administrative tasks are being completed, and further details that may help the firm succeed more efficiently in the future.
6) Set Aside Time to Edit Time Records
Whether using manual or automated time tracking tools, it may be necessary to occasionally edit your time records. This can happen if a lawyer forgets to switch tasks when they get a phone call, leaves a timer running, or is called away suddenly with their time tracking records incomplete.
The best time to edit time records is same day, when your memory of the day is still fresh. It’s best to set aside some time near the end of each day to audit time records and make sure they are accurate. Twice-a-day auditing is a good idea if your schedule is particularly busy.
7) Provide Specific Notes Using Standardized Codes
Keeping notes on time records is also very useful, both internally and externally. The law firm benefits from detailed records of time spent on each stage of casework, such as reviewing, drafting, researching, traveling, and court time. Clients also love to see details of the work they are being billed for in each invoice.
This means there is a significant benefit to taking notes on time records as they are entered. The most efficient way to do this is to use standardized codes and abbreviations. This allows for fast yet efficient accuracy in time tracking records.
8) Use Integrated Time Tracking and Billing Software
The best time tracking solutions for law firms involve integrated software. Lawyers should have access to automated software that not only makes time tracking easy, but also connects directly to the law firm’s billing system. Comprehensive integration ensures both useful data insights and transparent client billing, providing benefit to the firm on many levels.
LawBillity: The Accurate Legal Time Tracking Solution
If your law firm is looking for the perfect time tracking solution that integrates perfectly with a lawyer’s busy day and your need for transparent billing, LawBillity is purpose-built to meet your needs. As a legal time and billing platform, LawBillity integrates your calendar, automates time tracking and client billing in one simple solution.
Contact us today to explore how LawBillity can unlock your law firm’s potential for time tracking accuracy, transparency, and efficiency or explore for yourself with our 14-day free trial.
