In Calendaring Best Practices: Seems Simple, but Is It? we talked about calendaring best practices, and establishing a workflow. Today, we will connect some dots and focus on the dreaded missed deadline, bad habits, and improving inefficiencies. Calendaring is critical to your day-to-day operations so don’t take it lightly! If you don’t believe us, keep reading.

The Dreaded Missed Deadline

Did you know that lawyers have a 17% chance of being sued for malpractice every year? 

Addressing the #1 Cause of Malpractice Claims

According to the American Bar Association, nearly a quarter of all legal malpractice claims are based on lawyers procrastinating or failing to calendar.

• 6% of legal malpractice claims are based on the lawyer’s failure to file documents.
• 7% are based on the lawyer’s failure to calendar.
• 9% are based on the lawyer’s procrastination.
• 8% are based on the lawyer’s failure to react to the calendar.

Crazy, right?! 

If you look at all of these statistics, you will see that they are predominantly related to bad habits and inefficiencies. Let’s take a look at some of the bad habits plaguing the attorneys who are getting hit malpractice suits.

Waiting to schedule deadlines
If you’re not tracking and recording these deadlines as soon as they come in, you could be leaving yourself at risk for malpractice. 

Missing centralized calendars
If someone at your firm loses their calendar, or cannot see deadlines the rest of the firm is trying to meet, the more likely a misstep will occur. A rule of thumb to successful calendaring is transparency and visibility.

Lack of research
If you’re practicing in a new jurisdiction, you need to know the local rules or any rule changes. Even if you’re a new attorney, brush up on the regulations and make sure your bases are covered.

Failure to plan
If you do not have a plan of attack as to how you’re going to meet your deadlines, you will be leaving room to not only procrastinate but to forget about what you have due entirely.

Deadline reassignment
If your staff changes or someone gets sick, those court deadlines won’t change. Your clients should not be on the receiving end of your firms' disorganization when life happens. Always be prepared, and have a backup plan in case your team faces a disruption.

Entering deadlines
It is very inefficient to enter deadlines on a calendar one-by-one. If you have a high volume practice and one person is in charge of entering deadlines, it may take them a few days to enter everything in accordingly. And at that point, you are now a few days into a 10-day timeline, or whatever the timeframe may be. 

Potential Attorney Missteps

There are many things that can go wrong in the span of one case. Many of these things are out of your control, but some are not. Let’s go through some of those examples:

• Notice of Removal of Federal Court - This is a prominent trap because if you don’t file that notice you can incur attorney’s fees and a whole host of other consequences. 
• The Certificate of Review (or Professionals in some jurisdictions) - The case can be dismissed without prejudice, and if the statute of limitations expired, you cannot refile.
• Inadequate or late fact disclosures - This is what it sounds like. You can lose the ability to use evidence at trial if the evidence you’re providing is either past due or insufficient.
• Hiring an expert - If you hire an expert too late they will either not be allowed on the stand or they will come severely unprepared. You should try your best to prepare to disclose your expert at least 60-90 days prior so that they have a sufficient amount of time to prepare to the best of their ability. 
• Missing Summary Judgement deadlines - This is really huge. If you miss a deadline, you may be subjected to writing-off a ton of time or worse, a prejudice against your client's case. It should also be noted that your firm's failure to respond to a motion for summary judgment within the time required by Rule 56 cannot be forgiven by reliance on excusable neglect.
• Notice of Appeal - If you miss this deadline then you miss it. Now you can file a motion to extend the deadline, but doing so also requires you to act in a specific window of time.  

All of these examples severely impact your client. It is worth taking the time to modify and ensure that your calendaring practices are not only accurate but are standardized across the firm. 

Ideal Calendaring Workflow

1. Calculate your deadlines as soon as they are evident and available
2. Have another member of the team verify that calculations are done correctly. This initially may seem redundant, but human errors happen.
3. Schedule deadlines and corresponding reminders at the appropriate intervals and assign those to a second set of eyes 

You may have read those three steps and sighed. That’s a lot of work! But it doesn’t have to be.

Instead of researching deadlines and inputting dates manually, there are ways to automate this process so that you are not only spending less time on it, but you are remaining more accurate and consistent as well.

Practice Management Software

There are a considerable amount of advantages that come with using a practice management software, let’s take a look:

• You have a centralized calendar that is backed up and will allow you to utilize multiple views along with a matter centric view. 
• You can sync this calendar with Outlook, Apple, and Google Calendar.
• Workflows and task management are built into this, so all of the tasks associated with meeting those deadlines can be configured into customizable matter templates that can get layered on depending on what the deadline is. 
• Organized matters and matter streams that will help you keep track of your last activity. You will have a better idea of when a document has been prepared when tasks have been completed, and you can subscribe to a specific matter feed to get alerts for all things pertaining to that matter. This is great for firms that are collaborative or for firms who have a heavy workload and need help juggling a multitude of tasks.

How to Keep Your Calendaring Head On Straight

Aside from having to meet court and document deadlines, you have regular tasks and everyday to-dos that you have to keep up with. Whether that includes client consultations, new client intakes, progress reports, managing your staff, and not to mention being able to go home and turn off your work brain for a little and enjoy your personal life. All it takes is a plan, and we encourage you to try to implement one of these calendar tips today. 

Take 5-10 minutes at the end of each day to plan out your next day. 

Make sure all your appointments are filled in, check your upcoming deadlines, and ensure you have blocks of time reserved to be able to work towards those deadlines and begin crossing things off your list of to-dos. Also, be thinking about the top 2-3 activities that you can accomplish for that day. You don’t need to write this down, but take mental note of what went well that day, what you're grateful and blessed to have, and what you appreciate. It may seem insignificant, but in this fast-paced, high-stressed industry, it is important to take a moment to acknowledge the good. 

Use 30 minutes on a Friday to plan out the following week.

In addition to looking at your calendar and mentally taking note of everything you have on your plate, try to solidify 3-4 concrete action items or tasks to complete for your work, your relationships, and your personal life. If you already know this, then bear with us for those who don’t. Your work productivity, happiness, and satisfaction with your life are influenced by your relationships and personal life outside of work. 

For relationships, this could be anything from calling your parents to check-in, or writing back to an old friend or old co-worker. Little things like this make a difference and they do matter. For your personal life, this could be as simple as scheduling yourself a lunch. Often times, attorneys and legal teams will get so busy they forget to eat. We aren’t scientists here, but glucose level and productivity go hand in hand. All these things may feel like a distraction at times, but your motivation and the type of work results you produce will correlate in some shape or form with how the rest of your life is going. So take a minute to incorporate those elements into your calendar because they are important.

Create a firm-wide process for scheduling and set boundaries for your time

Sometimes when people have access to a firm-wide calendar, there is a tendency to grab any time they want and book you for things without asking first. All this does is throw you off. If you spent Friday planning out your week and then you find that come Monday there are multiple chunks of your day booked out already without you knowing, you will have to completely adjust what you had planned to do. How do you fix this? You set verbal and transparent boundaries. For example, set specific days for allotted activities. Maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays are when you do your inbound consultations and client calls. So when someone calls your staff requesting your time, they will know to slot them in on either Tuesday or Thursday.

The Pomodoro technique 

The Pomodoro is a proven and popular time management technique. The premise here is that you work in blocks that typically last 25 minutes that are called Pomodoro sessions. You work for 25 minutes straight, focusing on your work with zero distractions then you follow that up with a 5 minute period of rest or a break. The result of this is productivity and higher management of distractions. Now after 4 Pomodoro sessions, you’re supposed to take a longer, 20-minute break to step away from your work, catch your breath and clear your mind. 

Delegate

Delegate where appropriate and have dedicated time to review with staff. If you’re using practice management software, you will have a way to manage projects at a glance and also get really granular insights into the work your team is doing. This will enhance your firm's productivity overall and the quality of service you are able to provide to your clients. 

If your scheduling regular dates to review your matters and you have specific staff assigned to those matters, pull up the calendar and go through everything that you expect needs to be done or completed by that person. The earlier and more often you do this, the easier it will be to catch mistakes and avoid missed deadlines. Additionally, give these staff members the opportunity to talk about their workload, and give them feedback on the quality of their work. Also, use this time to offer support and constructive feedback; if you don’t like how something is being handled, let them know, or if you are happy with something you should express that as well. 

Takeaways

Calendaring is important. If you walk away with only one thing, it should be that. You may not be able to implement everything we just talked about overnight, but if you can start today, you will only improve company morale, ensure that no task is being forgotten, and you will help foster a system of efficiency and excellence within your firm.

As we draw near the end of 2020, many attorneys find themselves faced with the same universal question — “Is there any way I can collect on my outstanding receivables before the year is out?” Although it’s not something you dreamed about in law school when you thought about practicing law, collecting on unpaid bills is a vital aspect of your business. Ideally, you should want to end your year with as much money in your pocket as  possible. But, how can you collect on invoices that some clients thus far have ignored or refused to pay?

First, some quick definitions. Accounts Receivable, or “A/R,” is a term that refers to unpaid balances left on a client’s account. Furthermore, an “Aged A/R” is an unpaid balance that has been left standing for a certain, prolonged amount of time (say, for example, a client has not paid their invoice in over 60 days).

Now, let’s present a common scenario: Your client emails you saying she cannot pay her outstanding invoice. In this instance, many lawyers choose one of three options: 1) hang on to the invoice and hope their client eventually pays it; 2) enlist the help of a debt collector to obtain the funds; or 3) simply write off the debt when the year is over. Option One is less than ideal, because you have no assurance of ever getting paid. Option Two is hardly ever preferred because you still want referrals from that client, and handing over their outstanding balance to a collections firm is not likely to instill good feelings between attorney and former client. Thus, the majority of attorneys end up choosing Option Three, wherein they simply write-off the debt at the end of the year.

But, is there another way to get paid on an account that you were all but ready to write off? 

The short answer, for the most part, is yes! Attempting to collect on unpaid invoices is not a fruitless endeavor, no matter how aged the invoice is. Let’s look over a few quick tips to point you in the right direction.

Get organized

Naturally, every client you take on is unique in their own special way, and this also translates into their invoice payments. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to collect on A/R—every client with an outstanding bill will require a different strategy, but there are still some universal applications that you can utilize to track down your payments.

You can accomplish this by first creating a list of every client with an unpaid invoice, including their name, their matter number, the amount they owe, and how long the balance has been overdue (i.e., 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and 120+ days). If you work at a firm with multiple attorneys, you could also label each invoice based on the primary attorney overseeing the case.

Once you’ve put your list together, you can then determine which invoices you should go after first. You may consider tackling the “youngest” invoices first—that is, the invoices that have gone unpaid for the shortest period of time (let’s say 30 days, for example). Set aside time in your day to email these clients with a short, to-the-point message about their outstanding invoice, including the amount they owe. Include a link for the clients to pay online - the goal is to eliminate friction between your client’s pocketbook and your bank account. From there, you could expedite the process by duplicating the email for the remaining clients on your list—simply change the names and the amount owed, and send it off. This email should come from the attorney working the case; the attorney’s email address is more likely to grab the attention of the client. 

When dealing with the older invoices, you can follow a similar plan as above, at least with the clients whom you believe will pay if prompted (or will have a way to do so in the near future once you’ve reminded them). However, there is a high likelihood that you have clients on your A/R list whose ability and/or willingness to pay don’t inspire much hope on your part. These are the clients that you fully expect to write off at that end of the year. 

In these cases, consider offering the clients an opportunity to wipe a portion of the debt away if they pay within a certain period of time. For example, if a client owes you $10,000.00 and has not paid you in over six months, consider emailing them with an offer that if they pay half of their balance ($5,000.00) within the next three business days, you will forgive their remaining balance. You would be surprised at how many clients will take you up on this.

Adopt online payments

Another way to turn unpaid invoices into paid invoices is to make it easier for your clients to pay you. That’s where an online payment solution can make a big difference. These solutions give you the power to email your clients an electronic invoice that they can pay with a credit card, debit card, or eCheck. Rather than having to find their checkbook, write out a check, find an envelope, and break out their stamps, your clients can pay you with a few clicks of a button.

You would be doing yourself a favor in the long run by integrating online payments into your practice. Like it or not, cash and check payments are becoming less popular in favor of online payments and credit cards, with less than half of U.S. adults carrying cash on them on a regular basis.

Ideally, you should use an online payment solution that was built with the legal industry in mind, with features that can correctly separate earned and unearned fees and protect your IOLTA account from third party debiting. You can stay compliant with your state bar and also provide a benefit to your clients at the same time.

In short, giving your clients the ability to pay online will not only entice your late-paying clients to pay their invoices, but will also entice future clients to seek your services by giving them the payment options they most commonly use for most every service in their daily life.

This is only a cursory look at some of the strategies you could employ to get more cash in the door before the year’s end. If you’re looking for a deeper dive on collecting unpaid invoices from clients by the end of 2020, read LawPay’s latest e-book, Finish Strong: How to End the Year on Better Financial Footing. You’ll discover essential steps to keeping your cash flow strong at the end of your year, and you’ll leave with the right tools to reduce your outstanding receivables going forward into the new year.

Technology is a driving force behind trends that significantly impacts the way your clients consume and interact with data. Ditching old habits can be hard, there is no argument there, but the benefits of adopting these new tech-driven changes will be the difference makers between profitable and unprofitable firms. 

Calendaring. It seems so simple and trivial, but there is nothing more critical to your day-to-day operations than an accurate and up-to-date calendar. It is really important to evaluate and understand what types of calendars each attorney is using. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we must be able to effectively utilize distributed workspaces; so if your calendar is a paper planner zipped up in your briefcase, staff working remotely will most certainly not be able to access it.

This blog will be broken up into two parts, part one today will focus on best practices, and establishing a workflow, and part two will focus on the dreaded missed deadline, bad habits and inefficiencies, and how to achieve calendar zen. 

Let’s jump in.

Calendaring Best Practices 

1. Office-wide calendar 

An office-wide master calendar is a really good rule of thumb. Having one place where all of your dates are listed across the firm, regardless of the attorney that’s working on it, is a really good thing to have. Having a redundant calendar is important. If you’re using Outlook 365, that needs to sync to your practice management system. Transparency and visibility cannot be sacrificed.  

2. Recurring matter review date

You should set one review date for every matter to ensure they are being kept on track. What does this mean? You don’t want to have 200 matters in your system and then realize in 6 months that you’ve only touched 40% of them. Having a recurring date to review your matters on a regular basis gives you time to see where each case is, to check in with your clients, and most importantly just keep everything organized and up-to-date. 

The longer your case stays in your office, the less profitable it becomes. Take in cases, wrap them up efficiently, get them out the door, and collect your payment. The tighter you can make this process, the more money you will make. 

3. Enter deadlines as soon as possible

Enter your deadlines as soon as you’re aware of them with spaced out reminder dates. As soon as you know that a deadline is apparent, whether you’ve been served with discovery from opposing counsel, or a trial date has been scheduled, you want to make sure you get those dates into your calendar so that you do not forget about them. Having a tiered system to enter dates is also a smart thing to implement. Setting a reminder date to notify you that a deadline is coming up, an urgent date to alert you that you must take action now, and lastly a warning date right before the actual due date. By creating this tiered level of reminders, you will be able to stay more organized, and file motions for extensions if need be. 

4. Staff accountability

Make sure all attorney and non-attorney staff are held accountable. Everyone should know what their role or responsibilities are when it comes to deadlines. Whether they are in charge of entering the activity, drafting paperwork corresponding to the event, editing, filing etc. Everyone should know what they are responsible for. If one person drops the ball and misses a deadline, there should be no reason why anyone else attached to that activity misses the deadline.

5. Be realistic 

Give yourself enough time to investigate and work towards a deadline. Some dates are pretty clear cut. But there are other rules that are slightly more ambiguous and may require more research. An example of this could be if you’re taking on a case in a new jurisdiction. Give yourself enough time to investigate and work towards those deadlines. 

6. Analyze Procrastination   

Failure to react to the calendar is another field the ABA takes into account when they look at reasons for malpractice. So even with the best technology and minimal human error, if you’re avoiding or dismissing deadlines, there may be a bigger problem. For example, if you’re practicing law in an area you are not 100% familiar with, or if you’re working for a client you don’t particularly like, you need to figure out if you can find ways to combat those issues directly because if you cannot meet the deadlines, you need to remove yourself from the case. 

What Goes Into A Good Master Calendar?

A good master calendar is crucial for firm-wide visibility, collaboration, and accountability. Many attorneys have the ability to manage their workload in their own way, this includes managing their own court calendar. However, every firm should still have a master calendar that is managed by a well-trained member of the team that can constantly keep it updated. If events are not updated, attorneys assisting on matters may be more prone to miss key dates or information. 

Firms should also consider different viewing formats or filters. Your calendar must be agile and flexible enough to provide you with filtering options. In most cases, there are many filtering options that you can utilize, but it is best practice to explore which filters work best for specific teams. If your firm has different geographical locations you can filter by a specific area, or if you only want to view some members of the team over others, you can filter by that criteria as well. 

A good master calendar should be backed up regularly, either offsite or in the cloud. Depending on what you’re doing, if you have an on-prem system you are going to want to have a backup copy of that calendar in another location that is not your physical office. This is for reasons like natural disasters, break-ins, server malfunctions, etc. There are so many things that could happen and you have to be prepared for them. Cloud-based backups are very easy to implement. If you’re already paying for cloud services, your cloud provider should be doing most backups for you automatically. 

Your master calendar should also flow to and from matter-centric calendars. If you’re using practice management software, you want anyone who has privileges to access a matter in your system to be able to see the relevant dates and information for that matter. Additionally, this calendar should be accessible from your mobile device. Attorneys are on the go more often than not, so it is crucial that this information is available wherever they are. Make sure you turn on push notifications and reminders so that when you are using your mobile device for calendering, you are alerted to what is due and when just like you would be on your computer. 

Workflow Processes and Holding Your Staff Accountable 

The roles and responsibilities for everyone involved with calendaring should be clear. Who enters the dates when activities are made clear? Is there someone who is going to be responsible for double-checking those calculations for deadlines? Have tasks been assigned according to the upcoming deadline so everyone knows what their responsibilities are in order to meet them? 

Your calendaring process should be standardized across the firm to ensure continuity if staff changes. If that staff change does occur, then will you be able to easily train them on your process? Or if someone is out of the office, or they’re sick, you don’t want to have to call them with an emergency because the people who are available are not trained on how to read and operate the calendar. 

Proper calendaring using case management should also funnel into easy billing. Why you may ask? It is part of productivity. You want to make sure that if you are putting in the work to make sure you are meeting those deadlines, then you also want to make sure that you’re billing for it too. Some practice management software today have the capability to allow you to bill on the go, or enter time from the programs you’re already working in. For example, you can record your time as you save documents in Word or when you send client emails from Outlook.

Nobody should be able to opt-out of using a calendar because you want to maintain that accurate centralized firm calendar that is used not only consistently but in a uniform and standardized way. The workflow for each matter should allow everyone to know what step needs to be taken and when. This will lead to a higher level of firm efficiency, a higher level of communication, and as a result, higher client satisfaction. 

What To Walk Away With

Calendaring seems simple, and in part it is. But it also can be the difference between a malpractice suit and a profitable law firm. It is important to learn and train your team on best practices because although calendaring seems like a no brainer, you’d be surprised about how many firms struggle to keep their schedules buttoned up and organized. 

To learn more about Centerbase's calendar, schedule a free no-obligation product demo!

Cyber and Data Security

The threat landscape for data security is incredibly vast. Today, law firms have the responsibility and duty of technological competence to ensure that their client's information is safeguarded and monitored.

The sad reality is that law firms are often the center of data attacks because of the type of sensitive information that is being dealt with on a daily basis. Often times, attorneys assume that their email or personal information is safe. This is a mistake.

Maybe unbeknownst to you, your personal information includes clues into larger portals of information that can then be categorized and cataloged for hackers to use to gain access to other sensitive information. 

Crime today has been commercialized, and organized crime groups use tools to professionally infiltrate your information. The hacking industry now runs much deeper than someone sitting in their basement chugging a Mountain Dew, it has evolved into an illegal business that has cost firms and businesses billions of dollars. 

Because of this, clients are no longer just paying for legal services, they are also paying to ensure that their data is protected. Today, class-action lawsuits can be brought against a firm for failure to safeguard and protect their client's information. 

An attorney may be required to take special security precautions to protect against unauthorized disclosure of information or when the nature of the information requires a higher degree of security. So, for example, does everyone at your firm have access to the same information? Is it classified and compartmentalized across the firm? Is the data protected according to its sensitivity?

All of these things should lead you to question, are the measures you’re taking and putting in place strong enough to protect your client’s sensitive information? 

At the end of the day, it's about organizing your information in ways that keep it safe and accessible to those who need it. Do you keep all your client files on one hard drive? Do different clients warrant a different type of security to access their files, are they cleaned up regularly? 

Model Information and Security Controls

The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) published model information and security controls that have been adopted almost nationwide as the defacto standard for attorneys to follow. Whether you have an IT team or not, it is your duty and responsibility to understand these measures and be able to act on them.

Let’s go through some of these together:

1. Understand your information

In order to protect your firm’s and your client’s information, you must understand what information you have. You must then classify and organize it, and then thoroughly document what you are going to do to protect it.

2. Review the rights and responsibilities

You’re either doing a good job and following best practices, or you’re not. You need to know what procedures you have or will have in place to secure what needs to be protected.

3. Physical security

Does your office and your third party vendor’s space utilize badges and door codes? If not, this is the easiest thing to quickly implement. You can also go one step further and store data in different access-based locations and create logical controls so people are only accessing the information they are authorized to. 

4. Information disposal

What you do when you’re done with the sensitive information should be reviewed and documented with your clients as well. Are you giving their information back? Are you destroying it? Are you doing both? That needs to be outlined and made clear. 

5. Monitor 

Make sure your people and your vendors are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Conduct vulnerability assessments, make sure your devices are encrypted, and know if something is open or publicly accessible. Encryption is a very basic security measure that your firm needs to be aware of and implementing (if you’re not already). Your information should be encrypted both at rest and in transit. For example, if you have an encrypted computer that gets stolen, you don’t have to report that because the thief cannot do anything with the information on the device. Yes, you'll be out an expensive piece of equipment, but your data will be secure. That is encryption at rest. Encryption in transit is the protected information that is being sent or received between devices like through email or text. 

The most dangerous people at your firm are the ones who lead your IT team, but they are also the most helpful. This type of trust is a commodity. There must be controls in place to ensure that the work they have done is accurate and secure. If you do not have an IT team, you need to do your due diligence with your cloud provider or your third-party vendor and ensure that they are up to date with the latest security measures and you have records that they are constantly monitoring your information.

6. Insurance

You don’t know what you don’t know. Buy cyber insurance. Only 34% of firms have cyber liability insurance. Take the opportunity to limit your exposure because the cost of a breach will end up being significantly more than the cost to prevent it.

Now that you have all this information in place what do you do? You prove it. Take the time to get an industry certification or a privacy shield and be proactive to show your clients that their highly sensitive information is in good hands.

Third-Party Vendor Cloud, Compliance, and Risk Management 

Third-party vendors constitute a lot of risk. Did you know that 60% of breaches are linked to third-parties? Even today, many firms do not adequately assess these relationships because they feel that their staff is well trained and will assume their vendors are too. 

Let’s look at some numbers here: 

32% of firms do not evaluate third-party vendor security. 

60% of attacks come through third-party vendors. 

And only 34% of firms have cybersecurity insurance. 

So when someone asks? Why do we care? This is why. These figures are staggering. Even though you may have a buttoned-up security system, can you trust the third parties? 

If you’re working with third-party vendors, you need to follow some basic steps to ensure that the work they are doing is not only correct but protected as well. Ask yourself:

• Who are you working with? 
• Why do you need to work with them?
• Have you vetted them? 
• Have you asked how they handle sensitive information? 
• What are their protocols for a breach? Have you considered the time frame you will require the vendor to report a given breach? What steps must they take, and who they must contact?

As we discussed earlier because third parties are very susceptible to cyberattacks, clients are asking for assurance from their law firms and as a result, many of these firms are seeing an increase in information security and data governance audits coming from their clients. It is becoming more common practice to audit your third parties, both from the client and firm side because the risks of cyber attacks are so high. At the bare minimum, if you’re using a third-party vendor, make sure they are doing at least as good of a job as you are in implementing security controls. Do not assume anything because it is not if you will experience a potential breach, it is when.

What Do I Ask My Third-Party Vendor?

You don’t have to be an IT professional to ensure that your firm and your client's information are safe! If you're using a third-party vendor to store your data, consider asking them these three questions…

1. How are you protecting my information?

This is an open-ended question for which the vendor should immediately answer by showing you their security policy documentation, standards documentation, and instant response plan. If they respond with something along the lines of that information being proprietary, you should raise concern. The best practice in security is always transparency. 

Additionally, when you ask your vendor any questions regarding your data, pay attention to how they answer it, and take note of the amount of detail they give in their response. They should be able to tell you what they are going to do with the data, how long they’re going to keep it, and how the data is classified. 

2. What are you doing with my information?

What infrastructure is your third-party vendor using? Where are they physically located? What class systems are their server hardware and firewalls? Using a third-party vendor is a lot of work because you need to do your homework and make sure that your information is secure. For example, look at their data flow diagrams, this will tell you all the buckets where your encrypted data sit at rest and all the paths they take between those buckets when they’re encrypted in transit. It is important to ask how they encrypt your information and the humans that are physically accessing that data at each point. 

3. Business Continuity Plan  

This is your backup plan! Some firms use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a hosting vendor. Just last week, their system went down. Not for a few seconds or minutes, but for hours. The reason for this outage was undisclosed (scary!). Because of this, you need to know does your third-party vendor have an off-site disaster recovery location to allow for a quick transition? Ask to see what their uptime has looked like over the course of several years and if they have had a lot of impactful outages. Your job depends on being able to access your stored documentation and files. If you don't have access to what you need, you can't do your job.

Key Takeaways

Using third-party vendors may pose many avoidable risks. It is best practice to consolidate your tech stack and make sure you know exactly where all your data is stored. At all times.

When it comes to IT and your security, you need a strategy. You cannot hope things go your way, or hope a backup can be produced. Your clients expect nothing but excellence from you, you should expect the same from your vendors. 

And if you remember anything from this blog, remember this- If you didn’t document it, it doesn’t exist and if you didn’t test it, it doesn’t work. 

If you're still curious to learn more, check out our blog: Data Security for Law Firms: Everything You Need to Know

You can be the greatest law firm in your city or even your state, but lacking the necessary legal billing processes means your practice won’t be sustainable. Proper client billing is not a one size fits all approach – you must find what works well financially and work with a system that allows the flexibility needed to be efficient (without reinventing the wheel). There’s a major shift to cloud-based software for firms looking to get their bills out faster and to consistently generate more billable hours.

We’re going to walk you through the top legal billing features your law firm needs in order to account for the specialization and unique processes that go on in day-to-day billing. Chances are, you’re aware many of these systems must coexist, but you may not realize how to make them work together to effectively work for your staff.

Legal Billing Overview

From the moment a client contacts you to when they pay their last bill, a lot of things are happening behind the billing curtain that they don’t see. There are so many intricacies and steps that have to be taken to ensure the right bills go out to the right clients at the right time. Because of this, it’s important to have a solid standardized billing policy that is accepted uniformly across the firm. This policy may differ from firm-to-firm but consider including elements such as a timeline for pre-bill approval, a hard date for when invoices should be sent to clients, how the bill should be delivered to the client, and how your firm would like to accept payments.

You’re familiar with how it goes:

1. A client signs up and is onboarded into the system
2. Billable work is accrued throughout the case (hourly, ad hoc, flat-rate, subscription, etc.)
3. Depending on the billing cycle and the length of your case, bills and expenses are compiled at the end of every month or quarter
4. Attorneys review and approve bills with any edits
5. Bills are sent out to the client
6. Clients pay via the client portal, accepted credit cards, by mail-in check
7. Follow-ups from billing staff are sent if payments are late
8. Ask yourself where bottlenecks may be happening and where there’s room for improvement. And also, ask your staff – they’ll be sure to know the process best since they’re embroiled in client interactions every day.

Read more: Know the five questions to ask a legal practice management software vendor before purchasing

Top 6 Legal Billing Features Your Firm Needs

When going through all your features, ensure you’re transparent when presenting the billing process to clients. Not bringing up expectations on the cycle, billing method, payment timeline expectation, and stance on late payments can create lots of problems later when alignment isn’t there regarding a bill.

With that said, here’s what you need to have for a smoother, more efficient legal billing process:

1. Flexible Billing

While you may be accustomed to billing for work at an hourly rate, that may not be the best way to retain clients. According to the 2019 State of U.S. Small Law Firms Report, only about 60% of the day is spent actually practicing law – making generating billable hours difficult. It’s why having new billing strategies can help reevaluate the way clients are billed, and how to add more time back in everyone’s day with revenue-generating activities versus client onboarding or administrative work.

Depending on your area of law, if you’re representing a single person, a contingent fee or flat fee may work better for clients’ needs.

Consider all methods of billing, such as:

• Varied fee arrangements
• Fixed payment
• Contingent fees
• Subscription-based payments

2. Rate Table Management

For each attorney at your firm, there may be rate adjustments due to tenure and other experience. For the ability to fluctuate between them, rate tables are one of the most useful features to staying agile around billing.

Some software today allows you to configure your rate tables around the matter, client, system default, and timekeeper. Not two matters are the same, and the work you provide per case is not cookie cutter.  Because of this, it is important you have the ability to change your rates and make one-off exceptions on services that may not be standard billing protocol. At the end of the day, rate tables should be as flexible as you are.

Learn more about how Centerbase uses rate tables to manage rates from multiple users seamlessly

3. Billing Portal

If you ask someone on the billing team how many times they've been asked to print out a client bill or bill payment history, you can bet that you'll probably be met with an eye roll and a chuckle. Clients can be relentless. They want hard copies when you don't have them and they want electronic copies when you have paper.

Providing your clients access to a secure billing portal will take some strain off your billing team and allow your clients 24/7 access to view, pay, and download their bills. The job of a billing portal is to increase visibility into what is due and make it easier for clients to review and pay their bills. Additionally, this increased visibility will allow your clients the ability to find answers to their billing questions on their own before calling in for support. This way, your clients get what they want, and you have peace of mind knowing that you have provided them with a solution to all of their possible requests. 

It's no secret that clients don't always pay on time, but the fact of the matter is, your client's actions shouldn't influence your firms. The more consistent your firm is about sending bills, or having them readily available to view will help create a level of consistency where your clients will soon grow to expect to see your bill and pay them more regularly.

4. Mobile & Automatic Timekeeping

In 2020, most people are texting. Compared to ten years ago, people actually prefer to text with businesses vs communicate with them through email. Not only does texting elicit faster responses, but it is much more convenient. All of this sounds great, right? Well yes, but what about for attorneys? Your time is precious, and although texting your clients may be easier for them, how do make it easier and more profitable for you? If your clients are mostly texting, and you spend hours responding to their messages on the train, at home, or on the go, you have to have a way to track how long you communicated with them for. Otherwise, you are losing thousands of dollars each month.

Today, an agile law firm has the ability to capture the time spent sending messages or making phone calls. This mobile timekeeping feature is incredibly important to not only capture more billable time but also eliminate the manual work of logging it after a conversation. The goal is simple: provide better, top of the line client services while increasing your billable hours.

5. Electronic Pre-Bill Approval

You can substantially improve your firm’s cash flow by having a simple, easy-to-follow approval process for everyone involved to send out invoices more efficiently. With electronic pre-bill approval as a feature, you can create a single or multiple step approval process, and flow a pre-bill up the approval chain. What this allows you to do is move a single bill from one attorney to the next once it’s been approved. You can keep track of every change and edit through electronic records and ultimately you'll relieve pressure on your billing team by having the attorneys make mark-ups directly to the bill.

For example, this is how it works in Centerbase:

 

Watch our four-minute video about how electronic pre-bill approval adds more time back in everyone's day

6. Centralized Reporting

For billing insights and monthly reports, having everything in one place is an excellent resource to make informed decisions about your firm’s financials. With robust legal billing software, everything from matters, billing, and accounting data can be viewed in custom reports that suit your preferences and needs.

Better Legal Billing is Here

All the legal billing features mentioned in this blog are made possible with the right practice management software. While many firms are continuing to move to the cloud in this new world of remote work, it’s important to choose the right software that meets your needs and everyone’s in your firm. This includes steps involved to get onboarded and what should be imported into your new legal billing software.

Are you ready to step into the conveniences and revenue-generating abilities of cloud software? Then let’s talk. You’ll love seeing what Centerbase can do – all at no obligation to you. Contact us today and let’s talk.

Although eBilling may seem intimidating if you have never done it, there are ways to make the adoption easier. You may have questions if you’ve never done eBilling, or if you’re thinking of taking on a client that relies heavily on an electronic billing system, but don't worry, we have some tips on how to make this painful process a little bit easier. 

What is eBilling for Law Firms?

eBilling, summed up, is electronic billing for your clients, so your billing department doesn't have to send invoices through the mail. This makes transactional payments for matters easier – especially in a COVID-19 world where in-person contact is made to be limited. 

Importance of Following Strict eBilling Protocols and Procedures

Many guidelines have been put in place for law firm billing procedures for standardization and convenience for your billing staff. The nice thing about establishing eBilling as a precedent is that it helps avoid errors earlier on in the legal billing process. There’s no more re-typing or manually generating invoices with eBilling – as you can program what in-house can enter in as a bill against invoices outside counsel sends for payment. 

System parameters such as checking for budget limitations or accidental duplicate entries can be caught before it’s officially submitted on a matter. The same can be said about bundling bills, which can create confusion when processing and understanding what’s being paid for. 

This one-time implementation of eBilling in practice management software (or combined in a software solution you may already be looking at) helps put a stop to rogue charges that are difficult to track. 

How to Submit eBilling Invoices

Using a preconfigured billing system, outside counsel will need to submit a digital form detailing what the charge(s) for clients are in that cycle. Then, the eBilling system typically accepts and generates an invoice and ensures there are none of the aforementioned parameters that can occur due to human error before going to the in-house team to evaluate. 

Top Benefits of eBilling

The best value for implementing eBilling? Data insights. You can automatically capture data insights and ensure your matters don’t exceed the budget for certain services from outside counsel. All of this can be configured into the system so it automatically sweeps for this every time. 

1. Cost Reduction

   It’s undeniable having eBilling in place saves time – thereby saving money. Many firms that have switched over experience valuable time to focus on revenue-generating tasks, rather than the arduous manual upkeep involved with bill processing. eBilling helps by setting caps on a type of case, meaning you’re protecting the bottom line for everyone involved.

2. Increased Efficiency

   While anything takes a learning curve to understand, the amount of time saved over the months and years will be paramount to your firm’s budgeting and in-house team. At Centerbase, we have a proven system to get bills out 30% faster for your timekeepers. Imagine the boost in time that can be spent on refining processes and getting invoices paid quicker.

3. Ease of Use

   Being able to control costs and save time processing invoices from outside counsel are big benefits to eBilling software. Ultimately, this ease of use will boil down to managing costs much better and being able to analyze where discrepancies and limits may be becoming a recurring problem. eBilling makes spotting these problems with robust reporting and is a huge benefit to gain insights with just a few clicks..

4. Improved Client Experience with Online Payments

   Credit cards are the primary way your clients and prospective clients pay for purchases today. With an online payment solution, you can send bills that include a payment link, which your client can pay instantly from the safety and comfort of their home. Centerbase's payments feature is powered by LawPay, and it makes securely accepting credit and debit cards as well as IOLTA compliance easier than you might think. By giving your clients the ability to pay online, you will not only see your bill gets paid faster, but you will also be able to control payment options on a matter-by-matter basis. Services like LawPay do all the leg work for you, allowing your firm to seamlessly send and receive payments so you can spend more time serving your clients.

What Firms Love About e-Billing

For many of the reasons stated above, firms love the convenience of sending electronic bills for the quickness and added accuracy from the settings. Having a simplified invoice review process makes managing budgets and keeping track of where your billing is at during any given time is a huge convenience many firms have already switched to and reaped the benefits. 

Read more: Key Demands for Your Next Cloud-Based Law Firm Billing Program

Eliminates Printing eBills

With eBilling, there are no more wasted ink or duplicate bill prints. With legal billing software, you can make markups and approvals for bills directly in the software. Having trackable comments and feedback also ensures those extra copies and notes don’t get thrown in the trash in lieu of the newest, most updated copy. No one misses anything, and that multistep process gets whittled down to smooth, easy sailing.

Streamlined Approval Process

Because you won’t have to print pre-bills, the multiple rounds of approvals can be completely eliminated. That single pre-bill can be moved up the approval chain, with the software automatically tracking it to the next person needed to see once it’s approved. This relieves pressure from your billing team to have to track anyone down or clog the inbox with reminders.

Visibility and Documentation

Electronic records will always be kept of any notes attorneys make on pre-bills, making it easy to go back into the software to check anytime. This is especially useful if someone is out of the office or an attorney has left, who may have taken tribal knowledge with them on a certain client matter or bill. With extra visibility comes increased alignment from all departments.

Improving Your Staff and Your Clients’ Billing Experience

There’s no getting around it: eBilling has boosted efficiency and accuracy in law firms, all while saving time. By getting bills out more efficiently, clients have more time to review and pay their bills, keeping everything neater than before. At Centerbase, we’ve been able to help timekeepers at firms get bills out 30% faster – creating more room for firm-wide improvements that generate revenue and maintain a “work smarter, not harder” mindset. 

How Firms Can Prepare for a Move to eBilling

Interested in learning more based on the question “What is eBilling?” Some systems sell eBilling as a separate offering that can be on-premise or in the cloud. But while that can offer customization, it won’t integrate seamlessly with any existing software or outdated systems you may currently be using. 

You can prepare to move to eBilling with a few simple steps:

• Review your existing billing process
• Talk to your timekeepers and billing department about what they need 
• Compare budgets (and keep in mind you often get what you pay for)

Read more: 5 Questions to Ask a Legal Practice Management Software Vendor Before Purchasing

Are you Ready for eBilling?

Cloud-based practice management software and eBilling are packaged together with Centerbase, which means you only have to worry about one software for everything vs. a la carte options. We’ve helped thousands of firms implement solutions that work with their team, and not against them. 

We encourage you to read more into how you can integrate eBilling into everyday processes sooner than you think, and hope this has been helpful. Feel free to subscribe to our blog or check out our resources page for more content.

 

In the unpredictable world we live in, it isn’t uncommon for you to wonder if your firm is charging too much or too little. Are your billable rates in line with your competitors? Is it best to bill by the hour? By flat fee, subscription?  It's no question that there are a lot of options. So with all this in mind, how do you determine your firm's profitability? How can you make decisions that will be in the best interest of both your firm and your clients? Let's take a look.

Determining Your Profitability 

There are five critical steps you should be taking when you're considering how to price or re-evaluate your legal services.

1. Think about the products you’re offering
2. Identify your revenue model
3. Consider your customer acquisition costs (CAC)
4. Determine your case value and customer lifetime value (LTV)
5. Understand your fixed costs

Product Offering 

Yes, you are delivering legal services, but that is not your quote-on-quote product. Take the time to evaluate your niche and your unique value proposition. 

Whether you’re a software company or a law firm, you are ultimately selling a product. There are millions of products in the world, so being able to narrow down and pin-point your offering is crucial to making you stand out. Are you a real-estate attorney with subject matter expertise in environmental liability issues? Are you a family law attorney who has expertise in same-sex couple adoption? As you begin to look at your profitability metrics, it is important to narrow down what your firm specializes in and use those case numbers to more accurately reflect how lucrative your firm is. Drilling down on what makes your firm unique will only bolster your client experience, but your profitability as well. 

Revenue Model 

When you look at your revenue model and you’re considering how you want to bill your clients, the first place you need to be looking at and research are the market demands. Analyze what your potential clients want, what they are looking for, and what they’re demanding. Are you serving small business owners who may want to pay for services as work pops up? Or perhaps you’re serving primarily start-ups with small budgets who prefer to see all costs upfront? No two clients are the same, so it is important to understand what they’re looking for and how you can best meet those expectations. Additionally, you must also take into consideration the operational requirements needed to manage those clients. For example, if you’re billing hourly, then the operational requirements to successfully do this would require a software that allows you to capture and track your time. 

Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

The truth of any business is that it costs money to acquire new clients. Customer acquisition costs represent the time, money, and effort required to get leads and then convert those leads into paying customers. 

Look at the data you have available. It is best to go over things in increments of 6, 9, and then 12 months to ensure you’re getting the most accurate information. When you’re considering your sales and marketing costs for your firm, the first thing you should think about is your time. This could be the time spent on business development, networking events, anything that takes time out of your day to pursue in the effort to expand your book of business. Next, tabulate any additional money spent on digital advertisement, or direct mailings. These hard costs will be the foundation for determining your customer acquisition cost. Your costs to close a lead are incurred through the bottom of the funnel activities that take up your time like consultations or meetings.   

Let’s go through a fictitious example utilizing 12 months of made up data:

In this example, we took the estimated cost of your time plus the amount you spent on marketing and targeted campaigns to determine a total sales and marketing figure. We then took that figure and divided it by the total number of clients you work with throughout a given year. With that number, you subtract the final estimated costs associated to close that specific lead, and what is left is your total cost to acquire that particular client.

So going forward when you consider growing your business, this type of easy calculation will be able to help you understand that if you invest X amount of dollars, you will be able to attain X amount of new clients. By adding some predictability into your equation, you will be less surprised at the end of the road if things don't go your way.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Customer LTV represents the amount of business value or gross margin that is received over the course of a client’s lifetime. When that client first steps through your door, you must begin to evaluate how much revenue you are gaining from your client on a case-by-case basis.

Let’s go through a fictitious example of an attorney who bills by the hour utilizing 12 months of made-up data:

In this example, we took the number of hours this fictitious attorney was spending on Client X’s matter and multiplied it by their billable rate. Next, we took a look at how much money the attorney was spending to do that work. In this case, 25 hours of work resulted in 17 billable hours, which converts to a little over 70% profit margin. And lastly, we multiplied that total profit margin number by the total number of matters Client X typically brings to this attorney in a 12 month period. This resulted in an LTV around $14,400. A customer’s lifetime value is important to calculate because it will highlight to you which clients bring you repeat business without you having to spend those marketing and sales dollars to get them through the door.

Understanding how to calculate LTV in this easier scenario will allow you to replicate this information when you start looking at multiple fee arrangements. Like discussed earlier, if the market is demanding subscription billing, or consolidated billing (to just name two), you and your firm need to be able to meet these needs in order to remain competitive. Your customer experience will make or break your business, and how your clients want to be billed needs to be met with “yes we can make that happen,” not “sorry, we cannot accommodate that billing arrangement.”

Fixed Costs

At this point, you have figured out what expertise and skill set you have that sets you apart, you have determined what specific product you’re offering, how your want to set up your billing structure, how much money it costs for you to get clients in the door, and how much margin you can generate from that client in a given period of time. The last step now is to understand your fixed costs. Fixed costs represent the amount of money you are spending to support your law firm as a whole. On an annual basis, how much money are you spending to pay the firms office rent, support staff, legal technology, annual license fees, etc? These are your fixed costs.

What Does All This Mean?

The things that are really important when you look at customer acquisition costs and lifetime value are the scalability of your law firm and whether or not you can be sustainable in the long term. 

The first thing you can do when you have these numbers is to look at how long it takes you to recoup your customer acquisition cost. To do this, you take your total $627 CAC cost and divide it by how much profit you generate, which in our fictitious example was $4,800. So, what this means is that you recoup your CAC by the time you are 13% of the way through your first case with that client. A general rule of thumb is that you recoup your customer acquisition costs within that first year of starting the particular matter. This low percentage indicates that you have a little more room to spend on acquiring new clients if you so choose.  

The second thing you must do is ensure you’re making money over a customer’s lifetime. If you take the $14,400 LTV we calculated in the fictitious example (profit per case multiplied by the number of cases that client brings to you in a year) and divide that amount by the $627 CAC cost, that’s roughly a 22.3x return on investment per client. This is a huge number! This indicates that you could lower your billable rate to get clients through the door and still make a decent size profit. Do your research and determine where the market stands and then evaluate if you have room to adjust.

Scalable Business Model

Your CAC and LTV are what we describe as unit economics. In the long term, if what we calculated are your unit economics, can your firm ultimately make money? The answer would be yes. From a business perspective, there are always things you can do in the short-term that will get you by, but those bandaids will eventually come off to reveal a less than favorable result. Let’s do some quick calculations. If you’re generating $6,800 in revenue per case (determined from our LTV example), and you’re taking on about 50 cases per year, that’s about S340,000 in annual revenue. Now let’s say your direct costs total around $95,000 a year to serve that revenue, you’re left with a gross margin of around $245,000. Now, after your fixed costs, and sales and marketing expenses (for this hypothetical example, let’s say those total up to $50,000), your total income before tax comes to $195,000. If you can make these calculations each year, you will be able to determine if you can serve your clients profitably, while also saving enough cash for future growth.

All of this leads to what you should walk away with… without favorable unit economics, you will not have a sustainable law firm in the long run. Understanding how much it takes to bring new clients in and how much money those clients bring to your firm over the course of their lifetime will ultimately tell you how successful your firm will be in the future. There are levers you can pull after you understand this data. These levers are either revenue or pricing driven like billable hour vs. flat fee, or whether you’re above market or below market. You can adjust these metrics accordingly. The other thing you can do is adjust your service levels. If you’re spending too much time serving one client then you need to either keep your service level the same and bump up your rate, or if your rate is already in line with your competition, then keep your rate the same and spend less time performing that work. 

The goal is to understand your data at the customer level to determine whether or not you’ll be successful in the long term with your entire book of business.

Ideal Billing Workflow

The purpose of a billing workflow is two-fold: save your firm time and drive the collections process. There is a lot going on in the world and for your firm, if you can save time on non-billable tasks, stay organized, and increase client satisfaction, wouldn’t you want to? Sure it isn’t always easy to adopt new change and break old habits, but if it means increasing your profitability wouldn’t you want to try? 

It’s this simple, technology can help you bill while you work, get your invoices out much faster, and reduce your bottom-line. We’ll show you how.   

Invoice template

The first thing you should do is set up your invoice template. Your template needs to be consistent, clean, on-brand for your firm, and easily digestible for your client. It is important that everyone at the firm is trained on how everything is documented so that there is a level of uniformity that is maintained. Additionally, you should ensure your invoice templates account for all of the critical information that your clients want to see, like who worked on a particular item, what they’ve paid you recently, any money in Trust, ledger details, etc. This is an essential piece of communication for your clients, so it is imperative that you give an adequate amount of detail. Your invoice also contributes to your professional appearance, so make sure that it accurately represents who you are.   

Electronic invoice sharing

First, you need to ask your client for approval to email your invoice rather than sending it via snail mail. It is strongly recommended that clients opt into this agreement in a written way. This will help combat those individuals who claim they never got your bill in the mail. 

The beauty of an electronic invoice is that it will eliminate the time spent on printing, folding, stuffing, and then mailing every invoice you have each month. This is will also help you keep an electronic repository with documentation on who has paid what and who hasn’t, and depending on what platform you use, some systems will give you the ability to track whether the email with the bill was opened by the recipient or if it went unread. 

Legal technology is really opening the door to so many possibilities when it comes to your billing practices. For example, there are some software that will allow you to take advantage of a billing portal where you can provide your clients access to view and pay bills or to access a complete history of bills. Your clients want visibility, and with a portal like this, they're given the autonomy to review what they owe, on their time.

Set-up and apply taxes, interest, and discount rules 

Taxes need to be accounted for in jurisdictions where taxes apply to legal services rendered. Whether this is applied based on where your client lives, or where you’re performing the services, these rates can automatically be applied when you’re creating your invoices. The goal here is to prevent any kind of bottleneck at the end of the month when you’re trying to send your bills out. You could also consider assessing interest on past due invoices to help drive the speed of collections. This will need to be discussed with your client beforehand, it should be drafted up in writing, and something that they can expect if they’re late on a payment. Additionally, some states have found this to not be usury, so please take note of that and do your research as you’re making decisions. Lastly, you can incentivize early payments with discounts. If a client pays within the first 5-7 days of receiving the bill, you could consider offering a loyalty discount. Especially for clients with multiple matters, this will not only get you paid quicker, but it will build trust and establish a stronger partnership.   

Even if your firm chooses to pursue only one of these options, you will still be contributing to the reduction of bottlenecks and ultimately speed up your collections process!

Capture Time as Your Work

Do you want to hear something shocking? According to studies compiled in an ABA blog, if you don’t get your time in by the end of the day, you’re likely to lose 10% of your billable hours. If you don’t get your time recorded the next day, you’ll lose 25%! If you don’t get it in by the end of the week, you’ll lose a full 50%. 

So at this point, you’re either thinking, wow, I have lost my firm a lot of money or wow, I need to figure out more efficient ways to track my time.

If you’re thinking the latter, we’ve got you covered. There are services that address the pain points of being a timekeeper. With today’s technology, you have the ability to bill directly from tasks, phone and text conversations, email, and word documents. You can use multiple timers, you can set time to bill in advance and then adjust the figure accordingly in the pre-bill process. All of these solutions aim to remove the inaccuracies that come from waiting until the end of the month to record all your time. 

Schedule A Billing Cutoff Date 

As you are creating your ideal billing workflow, consider setting a hard billing due date. The most well-run law firms bill on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. When you’re ready to bill, you need to identify a cut-off date. Utilize a firm-wide calendar or practice management system to schedule these dates, so any work that was done between that designated time frame needs to be recorded before that billing cut-off date. This does not mean that the billing stops for any work moving forward, but any work that has happened previously needs to be submitted to allow the person in charge of billing time to run those pre-bills.

Set-Up Automated Payment Emails

The next thing your firm should do is set-up automated payment emails. This communication is a reflection of your firm and should motivate your clients to take action and to pay those bills. The email should not be abrasive, but rather warm and include their invoice and clear descriptions for how payment is accepted. If you have it set-up in your system to pay securely online, then this would be an opportunity to include that link. It should also include contact information if questions arise on the bill. The objective here is to make it as seamless as possible for your clients to pay you.

Run Pre-Bills, Then Batch Billing 

Running pre-bills and batch billing is the ideal, most efficient process. You get all of your information into the system regarding the work and services you’ve performed by that billing cut-off date, then pre-bills are run. Pre-bills allow you to see a preview of your invoices so that you can check for formatting, errors, or omissions without changing matter ledgers. The best part about pre-bills is that they can now be done electronically. Gone are the days where firm administrators have to give their timekeepers different colored pencils to mark up a pre-bill by hand. And did you know that by electronically reviewing and sending your bills, you will speed up your billing by 30%! That is a lot of time!

If you use batch billing, this will allow you to generate all of your invoices at once, in whatever format you designate, in just a few minutes. A lot of powerful billing systems have this feature for you to capitalize on to increase your billing and collections processes. 

Managing Alternative Fees 

In, 8 Tips to Improve Your Firm’s Collection Process Right Now, we talked about alternative fees and why you should set those up on your retainer or fee agreement with your client. If you have a situation for example, where you have a monthly retainer agreement, you can set this up to bill automatically. This is one less thing you would have to take care of. If you have matters that you’re billing hourly and then collecting on or deducting from Trusts and you have a monthly retainer agreement, you can set all these permissions up to draw directly from the bank account, or to automatically charge the credit card on a specified day. For payment plans, this is useful to accommodate your past-due clients or flat fees that cannot be paid all upfront. Sometimes clients do need a little flexibility and this fee arrangement is a great way to show them that your firm can be. If your firm chooses to use a reduced rate as an alternative fee, you want to ensure that you document the rate that deviates from your standard hourly to save you time when you bill and ensure you’re not inaccurately billing your clients. Taking care of these things up front will make running your bills at the end of the month much easier.  

Conclusion

All these steps can help you deliver an exceptional customer experience while also driving your firm’s profitability. If done correctly, billing doesn’t have to be dreadful! Centerbase offers countless tools to serve your law firm, take a free product tour today, and see how!

Do you want to hear something scary? More than 73% of small law firms surveyed said they experience past due client accounts at least some of the time. And nearly half of those firms say that between 10% and 39% of their total client base is typically past due. These are staggering figures! 

Unfortunately, clients don’t always pay on time, and the truth of the matter is law firms are collecting less and less from their clients each year. 

So the question that remains is why does this keep happening? Are there specific reasons that bills go unpaid? The short answer is yes.

Aside from a clients inability to pay due to financial constraints, the primary reasons clients forgo paying their bills are as follows:

• Bills are sent inconsistently 
• There is a lag time between when the work was performed and when the bill is received by the client
• The client doesn’t understand the billing description
• The method for the invoice payment is inconvenient for the client
• There is a lack of follow-up from the law firm

Let’s break these down further...

When bills are sent inconsistently, it breaks the client’s trust. They may feel they are receiving your services for free at some point if it has been months since they’ve last received a bill. If more than a month goes by between billing cycles, the client may feel like they are being charged too much for services performed months ago and they will consciously choose to not pay the bill. Clients may also dispute bills if they do not know what they are being charged for. Incomplete, erroneous, or unclear billing descriptions are common reasons you may not get paid. If your clients don’t understand what they are being charged for and if they don’t believe you completed the stated services, they are simply not going to pay the bill. This is where follow-up comes into play. Clients may call you if they have a question about their statement, but they also may not. It is your responsibility to follow up with them to ask if they have any concerns or if they need a better explanation of what is in the description for the services rendered. Lastly, if you’re sending your client a paper bill that requires them to fill out and mail a check back to you, you’re making it easy for them to either forget about the bill entirely or see significant delays in receiving payment. 

This all goes back to running a client-centered law firm, yes it is your client’s job to pay you, but if you can get into the habit of billing your clients the way they expect, and not the way you have always done it, what will result is a much more efficient collection process. Additionally, it is important to keep up with the technology that your clients are already using. A majority of payments are sent and collected electronically. If you have a client who pays all their other bills online, you can guarantee that they will be disappointed if they receive a paper bill from you. Giving your clients a way to pay immediately will also increase collection. For example, integrations with LawPay make it easy to accomplish modern services like this. 

Changing Your Mindset About Billing and Collecting 

There is an art to billing. Although it is a routine part of your business, it must be treated uniquely and skillfully. It can be very uncomfortable for attorneys to ask their clients for money, but you must recognize that is your value. You worked long and hard hours and you need to be compensated for that. Firms that don't put time and resources into their billing process, are typically the firms who are getting paid less and less frequently.  

Tips to Take Control of Your Billing Process

1. Identify opportunities to train and mentor young attorneys in billing and collections

Allowing younger attorneys to bill for small matters earlier in their career will help build a framework of good habits. Giving the younger generation this experience will also help encourage them to ask questions which will ensure best practice in the future. A good young biller and collector will be a good old biller and collector, and if you make it clear that your firm coaches and teaches newer attorneys on how to bill better, that is just one more advantage you have when recruiting talent. It is important to practice technique and to have worked through a few client concerns early on, that way when you’re working with a client who has a significantly larger amount owed, you will have experience navigating those waters. 

Additionally, establishing this culture of mentorship will lead to attorney retention and a greater workplace environment. In Tips For Firms to Attract the Best Recent Law Grads, we discuss how your firm can combat challenges and find solutions to gaining the best new talent. Offering this type of mentorship in the areas that are not being covered in law school will differentiate your firm and subsequently keep your clients happy.

2. Don’t force everyone to bill

Know your staff. There may be some attorneys on your team who really struggle with the client-facing nature of billing. If you have coached this attorney before, given them all the tips and secrets to learn how to successfully bill, and if they are still not getting it, then it is time to pivot your strategy. 

There are practice management software available to you that offer easy and automatic ways for your timekeepers to keep and bill for their time. Whether it’s through phone or text, email, or word documents, make it easier for your staff to bill the way that makes them comfortable while also meeting the client’s expectations.

Your good billers need to be responsible for billing your major clients. This entails knowing your staff, communicating properly, and maintaining just the right amount of teamwork. To be able to quickly detect when something is and isn’t working will be the difference between the revenue coming into your firm and a pile of unpaid bills on your clients kitchen counter.

3. Develop policies and procedures

When it comes to billing, creating, and establishing a standardized process will not only make it easier for your team, but it will ensure more timely payments from your clients. This process will look different for every firm, but billing every possible transaction in a monthly cadence with not only contribute to a routine, but it will also be better-received by your clients. And if you bill paper copies, having a minimum dollar value threshold for bills will help offset the cost and time associated with manually printing, enclosing, stamping, and then delivering the bills to the post office. 

Some staff turnover is inevitable, so writing these policies down and training your team on how your firm bills will contribute to uniformity, overall best practice, and easier transition for newer attorneys.

4. Don’t forget about the past-due invoices

This seems like a no-brainer but a lot of firms will send bills out and then never follow-up on them. If you want to turn receivables into cash, you need to be following up with your clients. Check in on them if they have questions and give them alternative payment methods if the way you originally sent the bill isn’t working for them. If the invoice is more than 30 days old, you minimally need to be sending a new statement, with the first invoice attached. If your bill still has not been paid after 60 days, you need to speak with that biller and find out not only what their billing process is, but what their communication with the client surrounding the bill has been, and their plan to recoup what is owed. If your clients do not want to pay in full, technology nowadays will give you the ability to set up reoccurring payment plans. Asking for money that is owed to you is never fun. Discussing expectations around billing and timeliness of payments with your client at the start of the matter will help increase transparency and hopefully, eliminate the need for you to consistently reach out to your client for payment.

5. Make sure your client understands what you’re billing them for

Your bills need to describe your services. If a client can understand and digest what you have done for them, it will be easier for them to pay. Each client you work with is different, some may need more explanation, others may not. Establishing what your client needs to see on their bill will help increase payment frequency and reduce any questions that may come from not understanding what the services you’re charging are. The likelihood of a client not paying their bill is higher when you give a shorter, less detailed description of your service. Investing in software can make this process easier for you.

Your pre-bill process takes a lot of leg work. But with features like epre-bill, you can seamlessly markup your bill, add descriptions, follow all the edits and streamline the entire process. To go a step further, you need to be detailing your billing processes in your retainer agreement. The most important thing you can do before you begin billing is to set expectations with your clients. Here are some potential points you should be thinking about to go over with your client at the start of a matter:

• How often do you plan to send an invoice?
• When is an invoice considered past due?
• What happens when an invoice is past due? Do you stop work? Do you give them an additional 15 days to pay? Outline the consequences for past due payments.
• Will a late bill incur interest? If they pay early will they be entitled to a discount?
• If you set up an alternative fee arrangement, make sure you detail that arrangement in the retainer agreement. 

By addressing all of these questions and concerns, you will be able to quickly reference the policies you outlined with your client in the event of a dispute. 

6. Effective collections require timely billing 

The sooner you send your bill after completing a service, the faster your client will pay. Different clients will require different billing strategies. For transactional matters, make sure you bill at or before closing because your clients will likely reinvest the proceeds of their closing. If it’s a litigation file, be sure to bill monthly, and if you bill bi-monthly, make sure your clients are made known of this billing schedule beforehand so they are not blindsided by receiving multiple bills within 30 days.

7. Maintain retainers and replenishments 

If you can get an injection of cash upfront to hit the ground running, you need to. And when those funds are low, you need to be able to replenish them smoothly, and efficiently. Automation exists to make your lives easier and to improve your profitability, so take advantage of it! If you’re already a Trust/retainer heavy firm, your clients should be able to make one payment and it automatically split between AR and the replenishment retainer in trust to the correct accounts. This way you do not have to manually track and write multiple checks or transfers from one account to the other. 

Communication with your client on the fee agreement regarding retainers is important as well. Is the retainer refundable? Is replenishment on a monthly basis, or on an evergreen basis? These are all questions you need to address with your clients beforehand.

8. Financial reports can improve billing and collections habits

Use financial reports to maintain better billing and collections habits. Everyone at your firm should be receiving a WIP report and Account Receivable report, every month to review. Increase transparency, make it known where each attorney is, and what work they are pursuing. With some software, you can even set up a report center to match the way you analyze data. It will allow you to easily group important reports and set up security on each table, providing different levels of access to your staff.

If you are spread too thin and do not have time to review and follow-up on these reports, then perhaps consider hiring a part-time billing associate. This person would strictly be on board to receive the AR reports, digest them, and then begin following up with the clients who are past due. 

Hopefully these eight tricks will help assist you and your firm with expediting your billing and improving your collection process. Results won't happen overnight, but instituting universal practices and methods with undoubtably increase your profitability and keep your clients happy.

The core of conducting good business lies in placing customers at the forefront of everything you do. However, COVID-19 has caused considerable disruptions when it comes to delivering exceptional customer experiences in the ways firms are accustomed to. Most likely, in-person interactions have become scarcer at your firm to minimize the risk of spreading the virus, inevitably making initial first impressions with clients rather different. This is especially true if your firm depends on building rapport and trust that often comes from face-to-face interaction. 

That said, delivering the best client experiences is still very much possible; the way it’s done has simply changed and shifted with our digital-first world.

One way to keep them happy? Implement a client portal. Client portals help your staff keep real-time interaction with clients while creating a secure spot for any communication or questions. This also remediates phone tag and lets them know you’re still right on top of their case with regular updates and information readily available. 

Here are some tips on how you can execute on delivering great client experiences through a client portal:

But First: Why Law Firms are Moving to the Cloud

For long-standing law firm partners out there, you may be wondering what’s causing so many firms to move their operations to the cloud versus storing things on local hardware. The rapid need that erupted for remote work has created even more urgency around the conveniences of a cloud-based software solution – so everyone’s on the same page and able to access client information safely and securely. 

The ability to keep client data in one place creates alignment across your staff and makes information retrieval and updates doable in real-time. Plus, with so many fully integrated capabilities, you can keep track of billing, securely share files, and any notes from calls they have with other staff members all at everyone’s fingertips. That agility is much-needed in today’s hybrid work environment, and a valuable asset when it comes to delighting clients and fostering a client-centric approach to your operations. 

Read more: Here are 10 mistakes to avoid when choosing cloud-based software

Now that you better understand the value of cloud-based practice management software, let’s jump into how to best implement client portals to deliver exceptional experiences for your customers so you get more referrals and continue to outdo your competition.

Top Priorities When Implementing a Client Portal

In order to improve client communication and create a client-centric approach to your day-to-day tasks, here are some priorities you should keep in mind when setting up a portal:

Focus on Storage

Most client portals come built-in with file storage attributed to each matter at your firm. The key is to make sure everyone uses the portal from the start of the case, so all paperwork, notes, and updates are logged for clients to take advantage of whenever it’s convenient. It’s a two-way street – a spot for clients to access things they may be wondering about in their case, but it’s also a tool for staff to easily share files when used with law management software. 

Focus on Security

Between all the digital phishing and security breaches, hacking emails has become way more common. It’s not worthwhile to risk your client’s sensitive information from being compromised when a portal is a perfectly viable alternative to holding all their data in one place. The nice thing is they won’t need to download anything additional to access – any internet-enabled device will be able to log on to view updates, and they’ll receive a simple notification email whenever any new information becomes available. Security should always be at the forefront of your firm’s mind so clients feel secure when interacting with you; it will create a smooth, positive experience that they’ll be sure to recommend to others.

Geographical Flexibility

Depending on your area of law, with a client portal, distance won’t be nearly as much of an issue. Whether a client has temporarily relocated or your firm is currently working remotely, for the time being, everyone can be logged in and have access to all the necessary information on both sides. Not only is this more convenient, but it also creates a better place for client-centric interactions on an ongoing basis. Smoother communication and collaboration leads to better efficiency for everyone.

Benefits of Setting up a Client Portal in a Client-Centric Model

While there are many law firms out there, there aren’t many that successfully deliver a client-centric model for a superior customer experience. Having a synchronized staff empowered to always deliver and update clients in a way that keeps them feeling top-of-mind can be an essential, distinctive aspect that sets you apart from other firms. Client portals are a vital part of maintaining and nurturing that relationship – from the first conversation to the final bill, every touchpoint is of equal importance to maintaining a client-centric model.

24/7 Access to Documents, Deadlines, and Bills

This “always on” model is going to delight your clients. Anytime they’re wondering about the status of their case, or if there’s anything you need from them, they need only check the online portal. And if they’re still uncertain about the status of something, contacting your firm is only one quick message away through the chat function. With readily available billing and documentation, there’ll be no more need for constant calls or emails. Much like the rapid development of chatbots on sites, this instant communication creates the very best experience for clients throughout their case. 

Deliver Exceptional Customer Support and Experiences to Clients

Client portals aren’t a magical remedy to all client communication, but it certainly takes the back and forth out of emails. In order to build ongoing trust and exceed expectations, it’s up to you to set the standard for client updates and communications. Consider sending out a weekly or bi-weekly update to your client, or having important dates of theirs (like a birthday, for instance) placed into your software so you can send nice, thoughtful messages instead of a strictly business transaction every time you talk. It’s building these relationships – that you see clients as people deserving of empathy and care – that will let you use client portals to bring exceptional experiences to them every time. 

Increases and Client Intake

One of the longest processes during the lifetime of a client’s case is the initial steps of onboarding. Despite modern advancements in digital technology, the intake paperwork and setting up their file can take a bit of time after their initial consultation. However, you can expedite this process considerably by spending less time having them sign on the dotted line and more time actively listening and talking them through the difficult parts that come with a legal matter. Most people are distressed and in need of guidance – so be that guidance, and use client portals instead to gather any other information that may be needed (with the exception of what’s required to represent them, of course). 

Improves Scheduling and Client Attorney Communication

On the client end, it can feel like there’s a long time spread out between updates on their case. With a client portal, you can help ease some of their uncertainties by sending them a message that will alert them via email on any updates that come through. Even if it’s a quick message, this communication can go a long way in demonstrating you’re willing to go the extra mile for them, even if it’s a minor update. With these convenient communication tools, attorneys can easily get support from staff to schedule an update call without all the back and forth emails of “does this day work?” 

Streamlines Billing and Accounting

One of the biggest pitfalls that can occur when a client-attorney relationship starts is the lack of discussion around billing cycles. Before any official paperwork is signed, it’s vital to set expectations on what billing schedule has been agreed on. Once that’s established, a confidential and secure billing statement can be sent and updated for clients through the portal itself. This is a much smoother way of sending a statement that clients will appreciate being able to access rather than waiting on a bill in the mail. Plus, you’ll get paid that much faster by having integrations that offer credit card payments through the system (how’s that for ultimate convenience?). 

Streamlined Communication and Collaboration Increases Efficiency

When everyone is on the same page about what’s happening, clients are happier and staff is able to deliver (and sometimes even overdeliver, in a perfect world). Things are always going to be busy, which is why now more than ever it’s so important to set up a system and customer portal that encourages a secure way of sharing information and data around a case. A real-time system streamlines everything for added efficiency and peace of mind in light of many uncertainties currently happening. Everyone’s happier, and things aren’t forgotten about in a file or lost. It’s all backed up in the cloud and available to view whenever desired. It’s the true key to working smarter, not harder.

Implementing Client Portals at Your Firm

When it comes to creating an exceptional customer experience at your firm, look no further than a client portal that keeps them up-to-date 24/7. Even when society goes back to in-person interactions more frequently, the benefits of a secure online portal will continue to be a useful tool for delighting customers at your firm throughout their case. This “new normal” has created some lasting changes – and firms must adapt to meet the demands of the modern customer.

If you’re interested in the other benefits client portals to have to offer, please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation chat. We’re passionate about helping firms enhance experiences with clients to truly set them apart from the competition. 

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