Productivity isn’t only related to the legal field conceptually. It links directly to profitability, client loyalty, and future growth. But assessing productivity within a hybrid or remote legal field isn’t as easy as it once was. While some teams look to billable hours to assess productivity, that figure isn’t always an accurate reflection of someone else’s actual work.
This is where time logs come in, and when used for more than just managerial administrative functions, such as a chance to assess performance, they can reveal productivity blind spots about your legal team and what’s taking longer than it should to complete tasks and projects, minus micro-managing everyday activities.
What Are Time Logs and Why Should They Be Used?
Time logs are segmented chronological records of what employees do within a workday. In law, time logs are related to billable hours; however, they can be useful for in-house productivity purposes as well.
There are various forms of logging time:
- Manual entries: Typical timesheets or paper spreadsheets
- Automated tools: Passive programs that record if someone is sitting at their computer
- App-based opportunities: New-age time loggers like LawBillity
Some firms shy away from the opportunity to utilize time logs out of distrust for their employees and fear of a Big Brother situation. However, when constructed in the proper context and for the proper reasons, time logs can provide insight into productivity as opposed to non-compliance tools.
What Time Logs Indicate About Team Productivity
Time logs do more than generate timesheets; they provide critical indicators of team productivity. Here’s what law firms can learn:
Total Hours vs. Productive Hours
Billable hours don’t necessarily translate to productivity. Time logs help determine how many hours in a day are spent doing non-billable work, whether that’s time spent fixing internal issues or administrative lag.
Time Spent on Client Work vs. Internal Work
Lawyers are always expected to wear multiple hats. The time logs will reveal where high-value work may be displaced as a function of internal issues, or if resource allocation is effective with admin support staff.
Client or Case Allocation
Are you devoting your hours to your most appropriate clients? The time data will help you review the time spent associated with a client or case to ensure you stay in alignment with the business vision.
Overtime Allocation
If you’ve got a lot of overtime hours, that means either you have a lot of work or ineffective allocation across your teams or poorly defined scope from the get-go. Timesheets prevent burnout.
Breaks and Recovery
You can track break hours through time logs and determine if recovery hours help or hinder peaks and valleys of performance. Team members must feel comfortable taking appropriate recovery hours for concentration and mental stamina.
What Time Logs Reveal About Team Productivity
Well-analyzed time logs tell you way more than productivity. They expose elements of your operation that may not be revealed unless you’re inspecting every little detail.
Find Your Stars and the Struggling
Time data shows who is getting the job done efficiently and who is struggling. This gives management the ability to give praise for accomplishments and redistribute workloads to maintain harmony.
Analyze Where People Get Stuck
When people get bogged down in the same area of a project, time logs can point to a flaw in the process as opposed to an imperfection in individual ability.
Determine if Context-Switching is Required
Jumping back and forth between projects wastes brain power. Time logs can reveal if your employees are juggling too much and if work streams need to be realigned.
What Time Logs Can Teach You About Your Legal Team’s Productivity
Plan for Future Projects Based on Past Timing
The more you track time, the more you’ll gauge how long things take. This makes for better project assignments and case predictions in the future.
Learn Productive Work Times
Time logs can show you when your team is most productive, if they do well in the morning or if afternoon lunch makes them sluggish. Take advantage of their focus windows for scheduled events.
Use Time Log Discoveries to Become a Better Leader
Data-driven decision-making leads to success. Managers within law firms can use time logs to enhance their leadership in the following ways:
- Evaluate Processes: Judge employee performance based on concrete data instead of conjecture.
- Opportunity Assignment: Find out who is underworked and who is overworked.
- Prediction Opportunities: Use trends to support future needs.
- Accountability without Micromanaging with Virtual Employees: Trusting your team allows your virtual employees to gain transparency and autonomy, not micromanagement.
An excellent example of time log effectiveness in remote situations comes from an article in the Harvard Business Review, which discovered that trust and transparency are critical factors to appropriately assess a remote workforce, not time log compliance.
Best Practices When Using Time Logs
Time logs hold the most power in conjunction with the system surrounding them. For law firms, these will ensure necessary buy-in and understanding, not push-back.
- Integrate Into Your Current Systems: Choose something that works in concert with your practice management or billing applications.
- Explain to Your Staff Why Improvements Can Be Made: Rationale for accurate reporting is not punitive; it’s to make everyone’s lives easier.
- Encourage People to Time Log at Other Intervals During the Day: Don’t just log time at 5 p.m. (or later). Log throughout the day.
- Empower Your Team with What the Time Logs Are There For: Time logging is for recommendations and enhancements purposes, not for watching over people’s shoulders.
What Mistakes to Avoid When Using Time Logs
Time logs are effective but only to a certain degree. Avoid these universal mistakes.
- Lack of Information: Five hours on one case could either be a disaster or an epiphany—more information is better.
- Over analyzation: Don’t analyze every single second. Use patterns, not daily fluctuations, to guide decision-making.
- Neglect Human Elements: Productivity is more than time. It’s about team player efforts, creative ventures and team morale, too.
- Reliance: Time logs are one factor, paired with subjective insights from the team.
Empower, Don’t Micro-Manage
Used effectively, timesheets do not just monitor they enhance the way legal teams function. They become more aware of the process, find redundancies, and create efficiencies for the future. The key is to use them to facilitate, not stifle. Merge the data with care, control with direction, and your law firm will be operating at its utmost potential.
Want to Get the Insights You Need Without Micromanaging? Try LawBility and discover how more efficient time tracking empowers more efficient teams.
