For law firms, time is money, and there’s no time to waste on inefficient billing practices. But many law firms still rely on slow, tedious, paper-driven legal billing processes that hamstring their productivity and profitability. And many have yet to implement—or enforce—billing policies that would govern the creation and review of time entries and hours worked. Yet firms wonder why they can’t shrink their revenue capture cycle.
Inefficient legal billing practices create difficulties at every level of a law firm. For lawyers, every precious minute they spend tracking and recording their time is a minute they aren’t adding value through their legal work. This drives lawyers to take shortcuts, such as omitting explanatory details or using cryptic abbreviations, that lead to unclear bills. Those ambiguous notes, in turn, require further review and clarification and add more delays. Lawyers may not check to see whether their work matches client service agreements, and they may fail to specify proper billing codes. Those that cling to paper timesheets and bills often scrawl notes incoherently in the margin of invoices or pre-bills for their assistant or accounting team to decipher, contributing to confusion and inaccuracy. At the end of the month, the law firm’s administrative team and accounting department must deal with these headaches—and more—all under the time pressure of closing out the month.
Legal billing doesn’t have to be this hard. Here are our top tips for ways that you can start accelerating your law firm’s billing processes.
1. Require Timekeepers to Enter Their Own Time in a Digital Timekeeping System
While administrative staff should support lawyers and paralegals in entering their time, they should not have the primary responsibility for it. Timekeepers themselves are in the best position to describe and categorize their time worked.
2. Require Timekeepers to Enter Time Contemporaneously
Timekeepers often wait until the end of the month to enter their time. At that point, they either consult their own manual or electronic system (both of which require duplicative work), or they comb through the recesses of their brain to recall what matters they handled, what tasks they performed, when they performed them, and how long they spent. Even attorneys who rigorously keep their time while in the office often forget those good habits when they go to court or travel to meet with clients, leading to the end-of-month reconstruction process.
When lawyers enter their time daily, they more accurately capture the time they’ve billed—and they can prepare their bills more quickly. They’re also less likely to be late in submitting their bills for reconciliation, which keeps the billing process running on time. At a minimum, your firm should require its lawyers to enter their time weekly and provide additional incentives for lawyers who finalize their bills by the month’s end.
3. Make it Easy for Lawyers to Capture Time
Lawyers, particularly when working remotely, may not capture the full extent of their billable hours. Adopt billing software that automatically captures time spent on client calls, texts, emails, and documents, whether from mobile devices, email apps, and even Microsoft Word. For example, Centerbase automatically captures client phone calls and texts as billable time, leading to an average increase of six additional billable hours per attorney each month.
4. Standardize Narrative Guidelines
To ensure consistency between timekeepers, implement, and enforce guidelines that detail how lawyers should describe the tasks recorded. The more granular your requirements are, the more uniform your bills will be—and the faster they’ll process.
5. Train Timekeepers on Outside Counsel Guidelines
Outside counsel guidelines should help to standardize the firm’s billing practices, but not all firms ensure that the guidelines are disseminated and readily accessible to all timekeepers. Make sure all lawyers and paralegals have access to the most up-to-date versions of all guidelines. Send periodic reminders to counsel to improve consistency. If you have billing software, see whether you can use the guidelines to create rules that will alert timekeepers to potential violations at the point of time entry.
6. Adopt an Electronic Pre-Bill Process
Many law firms still rely on paper-based pre-bill review processes that are fraught with issues. For instance, these processes create bottlenecks anytime that multiple lawyers must review bills. A bill’s first draft is often rife with inaccuracies, such as incomplete or vague descriptions or missing details like task codes, meaning the bills must be returned to the timekeeper for revisions—further extending the billing cycle and adding to the lawyer’s non-billable workload. If these issues aren’t corrected, clients may refuse to pay and lose faith in the firm, leading to lower collections in the near term and a decline in overall revenue in the long term.
Paper processes afford little transparency into billing practices, particularly edits and writedowns. Furthermore, there’s no audit trail documenting who made changes or when changes were made, which may create challenges if clients later dispute the charges.
An electronic pre-bill process avoids the delays of circulating paper printouts of pre-bills, reduces the risk that documents will be lost, and eliminates the frustration of illegible handwritten adjustments. Billing software that allows online revisions also enables firms to see changes at a glance and track bill changes over time, avoiding writedowns on top of writedowns and allowing businesses to identify the source of changes in the future.
7. Streamline Your Approval Workflows
Billing software can automate the approval process, notifying the next person in the workflow when the prior reviewer’s work is complete. This process also gives lawyers and accounting immediate visibility into where bills may be stuck so they can rectify delays.
Billing is no exception to the adage that what gets measured gets managed. Billing KPIs should go beyond basic metrics such as hours billed and realization rate. Consider adding metrics to improve timekeeping quality, such as the number of edits made during pre-bill review and the dollar value of those edits. A review of metrics would then suggest which timekeepers may require additional training on billing processes (and if you're curious about how to create a billing training program, check out How to Create a Legal Practice Management Software Training Program). Firms may also want to measure the time it takes to finalize a bill or other time-related measures that may identify logjams in their billing processes.
9. Establish a Set of Written Billing Policies and Enforce Them
Your firm should establish clear policies that govern billing for attorneys, administrative staff, and accounting. Outlining your billing processes will help you identify problems that you need to resolve and enforce your policies. It may be prudent to add a penalty for those who persistently violate your policies.
10. Follow Change Management Best Practices
Technology is the linchpin for effective change in billing efficiencies, but it cannot stand alone. New solutions must be reinforced with policies, training, and support. Timekeepers and administrative staff must learn how to use billing software and understand billing guidelines. Follow-up training will help to increase adoption and reduce mistakes.
Peruse any standard law school syllabus, and you’ll find a class – and a curriculum at large – that rewards individualism. An attorney’s entire career rides on their sole expertise to attract clients. With this in mind, from test scores to days in court, it’s no secret attorneys often prefer to practice separately. It’s easier, not to mention they don’t have to rely on someone else – and thoughts of “What if they steal my client?” can be put to bed.
But it’s lonely and risky at the top. We’re seeing the narrative is starting to change with the advent of successful collaboration and the value it’s bringing to law firms. (Who knew working together could pay off so well?)
Legal collaboration “involves specialists working together substantively to deliver a project rather than experts working separately in disciplinary silos.” (Source)
Distinguished Harvard Law School Fellow Heidi K. Gardner uncovers the empirical, often unlocked potential of collaboration: that “clients served by multiple practices are far more likely to retain their law firms for longer – even when the client-relationship partner leaves.” The higher margins brought on by attorneys working together are often ignored due to the inherent risks and lack of competency trust. After all, as we mentioned before, attorneys are led to their profession on the efficacy of their own work; their own test scores; their own intellect. It’s far easier to trust yourself than another associate in an area of law you’re not well-versed. And what if they take your client?
On a surface level, matter collaboration may not seem palatable to risk-averse firms, but the long-term payoff reaps considerable rewards for attorneys by helping them gain a wider breadth of experience and higher payment margins – often by hundreds per hour in a few short years.
So let’s demystify the stigmas around collaboration and discuss how you can take actionable steps toward adoption of its practices in your firm:
Legal Collaboration: More Effort Than It’s Worth? Think Again.
Although expectations around collaboration may feel limiting, the reality is, for many firms with a “lone wolf” mentality, it’s likely roadblocks will occur. This, unfortunately, leads to confirmation bias of its ineffectiveness. Many firms rife with high stakes projects feel the effects of performance pressure, leading to risk-aversion and often less-than-stellar outcomes.
However, with the proper checks and balances in place (which we’ll cover in more detail later), matter collaboration opens up a treasure trove for lawyers to work across specialties, gain loyal clients, and charge more for their work in the long run.
Why?
Clients are privy to value; they want strategic direction and validation more than anything else. And yes, while a bevy of attorneys possess technical prowess, no one knows all the ins and outs of every aspect of law. Being able to drive the car forward in a way that benefits your client’s best interests leads to higher margins and a better relationship with your partners. The fuel to keep the car going lies in ongoing colleague collaboration.
Not only that, but cross-practice collaboration encourages a team player environment and reinforces loyalty to the firm and all its partners. Consequently, this helps train lateral hires and retain quality associates for longer, too.
Here are some insights from years of research (sourced from Gardner’s report):
Surveys and interviews with hundreds of practicing lawyers reveal that trust in colleagues is the key ingredient that enables knowledge sharing and collaboration
According to data from one large law firm, a single work referral typically generated about $50,000 of extra revenue for the receiving partner
Cross-practice collaboration experience allows attorneys to raise rates faster than peers only doing siloed work, raising from $500 to well over $750 (with attorneys in siloed work only raising to about $600 in comparison)
These collaboration referrals also provide an extra layer of security during recessions, as 2008’s market crash proved. With even five to ten trusted associates, you can ensure during hard times that you’ll still have work coming through to you.
Ways to Facilitate Collaboration
In order for collaboration to truly thrive, a clear plan must be in place. When it comes to legal collaboration, creating goals, and specifying how they’re measured is vital for attorneys to understand expectations.
Psychosocial Rewards
In Gardner’s report, she discusses the need for psychosocial rewards to help further relations and fill in the gap for trust: “Therefore, provide abundant psychosocial rewards, such as recognition for excellent client work or firm-building initiatives. Compensation still matters, but people pay far less attention to it than in places where ‘the number’ is their only signal of their worth.”
Rewarding performance with compensation bonuses alone isn’t a failsafe to fostering an environment for accessible collaboration. This is especially telling in firms seeking to bring up junior associates and help build their repertoire. If an attorney gives one of his cases over and doesn’t meet a specific quota, it would hardly make sense to give the extra bacon to another who kept everything to himself and refused to mentor or funnel cases to other juniors. This is counterproductive toward spreading knowledge, and instead manifests as a roadblock rather than a benefit.
Face-to-face Interaction
Another way to encourage collaboration is to host face-to-face events. This networking will forge stronger relationships and increase knowledge on all colleagues and their capabilities. It’s been shown that firms that do happy hours and retreats – ways for associates to get to know each other – strengthen the firm and keep employees engaged and loyal.
With these methods in motion, now all you need are the tools to keep the momentum going – what can be seen as the wheels of your collaboration car.
Software and Collaboration: The Facts
It’s important to note before moving forward that regardless of any software, matter collaboration succeeds only by fostering an ongoing environment of trust – both in relational and competency trust – between associates. Trust is the key ingredient that creates your coveted high profit and strategic direction benefits as time progresses.
With matter collaboration, you need effective communication tools to enable visibility for everyone. At the end of the day, a law firm is nothing without its people. You need a channel to share ideas; pitches; networking events. And you need a space that makes sense of it all with custom dashboards and reporting. Welcome to Centerbase’s project management and client relations tools.
Here’s how these tools can help:
Client Service Tools
Creating an easily digestible experience for clients is built directly into Centerbase. Our text messaging app allows for frictionless, real-time communication between you and your clients – all stored directly in our cloud-based system from any device. Simply send a message, and skip playing phone tag. Rest assured, for confidential information, you have the capability to send an encrypted email straight from the app.
But what does this mean for referrals, you may be asking? It means you can transfer all the same conveniences – for instance, with billing and communication – to other associates and referral cases. It’s one platform for everyone to use.
24/7 tools: With convenient 24/7 tools readily accessible, everyone can remain aligned on billable hours and the status of all cases a client is involved with
Matter specific phone numbers: Maintain boundaries between work and home by using the software’s generated numbers (no more giving out your personal cell phone number)
Conversation tracking: Conversations can be directly tied to matter, so you never have to remember who said what when – it’s all in the digital file, so you can read and go “Oh yeah, I remember!”
Project Management Tools
The staff at your firm are the very backbone of daily operations. Empower them with seamless tools to be more efficient, make less mistakes, and flourish in personal development.
The very same occurs when it comes to collaboration. Once the doubts of investment and associate trustworthiness are removed, you’ll have full visibility into all associates and what’s being worked on. This isn’t about reinventing the wheel; it’s about simplifying the cogs and removing impediments.
Matter reporting: Get instant caseload updates and important stats, such as upcoming deadlines or various case updates from associates
Deadline management: You can easily juggle different areas of law for one client – our deadline tool imports all region-based court deadlines directly in the system
Visual tracking: Use kanban style tracking with a simple drag and drop interface (think Trello, but for legal management and matter collaboration)
The Reality of Legal Collaboration
As they say, two minds are better than one. While there are risks involved in adopting collaboration in your firm, if onboarded properly with outlined incentives (not just compensation), the benefits are vast.
The law firm landscape is changing, and adapting with effective collaboration methods will keep your talent engaged while also broadening their skills.
Practice management software vendors tout a multitude of features. But how are you supposed to sift through this sea features to figure out which ones will aid your firm? You’re in luck, because I’ve done the legwork of sifting through features for you. In this article, I will dive into some features you should consider when you’re evaluating practice management software. For the sake of word count, I am not going to include billing features in this article.
Before you purchase legal practice management software, it’s important to understand the capabilities that most programs offer, so you can weigh each software’s strengths when narrowing down your selection.
Here is a list of the most common features found in a legal practice management software platform:
1. Matter management
Matter or case management is the base of any legal practice management software. It’s the glue that holds all the matter elements together in the software. In most systems, the matter manager will be your matter dashboard, which provides your staff important fields of information on the case such as Client, Matter Number, Open Date, (Important) Parties and other matter data that you’d like to track easily.
From the matter, you can navigate to all calendar appointments, tasks, documents, emails and parties.
A matter-centric system allows your staff to find all the information they need about a matter in one place. If you put processes in place at your law firm, your staff should know not to save anything matter-related outside of this feature (or program).
2. Firm calendar
A firm calendar helps your staff understand everything that’s going on in the office. Firm calendars can include staff calendars as well as resource calendars such as conference rooms.
The firm calendar makes it easier for staff to schedule attorneys’ time and if synced with Outlook, can reduce the number of clicks it takes to get a new calendar event updated to everyone’s devices.
Finally, if you’re using a firm calendar within your practice management software, you should be able to track the matter that each calendar event is related to. This not only helps with filtering and searching the calendar, but also allows you to pull a list of all the calendar events and deadlines associated with a matter.
3. Task management
In the last 12 months, a good amount of software seekers have asked me about task management. When asked, I tell them that the days of Outlook tasks are over.
Firms are starting to see the benefit of having a centralized, matter-centric task management system that allows them to push out tasks to members of their team and see when the tasks are completed. How could they not?
A lot of the practice management software vendors are adding more powerful task management (kanban boards) thanks to popular programs such as Trello and Asana.
Like calendaring, it’s nice to be able to see all tasks, across all staff, associated with a matter.
4. Contact management
Contact management (or CRM in other industries) is a funny topic in law firms. This is because many attorneys protect their contact and client lists at all costs and do not want them getting out to other members of the firm.
Having a central “rolodex” helps you in a few different ways:
You can see how a person is related to all the cases at your firm.
You can run more complete conflict checks.
You can segment your lists and do targeted marketing.
You have all important contact information in one central location that all staff can reference and use.
5. Document management
Every firm tracks documents related to their cases, but there are three different ways I see them do it. Law firms either have a drive on their server with a folder for each matter, keep track of documents in their practice management software, or they have a more powerful document management software (DMS) that they use to track properties, increase searching capabilities, and keep track of versions.
A lot of practice management software will either allow you to host the documents in their system, or connect a cloud-based document repository such as Google Drive/Box/Dropbox or a full-blown DMS such as NetDocuments or iManage.
Overall, you’ll want to have your documents connected to the matters in your practice management software because it will allow you to easily access your documents in the same place that you’re accessing other matter-related information.
6. Document automation
Document automation features allow you to pull pieces of information you’re tracking on a matter directly into a document template, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors (leaving the name of the previous client you used the document for, in the new document).
The main benefit of having document automation features within your practice management software is not having to do duplicate data entry.
If document automation is an important tool to your firm, I’d make sure to speak with the vendor about the exact capabilities the program has to offer. For instance, does their software include an interview format, meaning it has conditional logic to change the number of fields for things like the number of adverse parties or children, or is it a one-to-one translation from the matter fields in the practice management software.
7. Email management
I don’t know many people who enjoy reviewing emails in Outlook. It’s impossible to do with the number of emails people receive in a single day.
Many legal practice management systems will include a way to save emails from Outlook to a matter. Some will require you to drag the email to a folder that will update their practice management system, BCC a specific address or they’ll have a plugin that includes a popup dialog to save the email into the system.
If you’re storing emails in your practice management system, it’s easy to reference the emails later on without having to dig through your inbox.
Finally, understand how the practice management software stores the email once it’s brought into their software. This is important if you’re required to produce these emails. Some software will convert the emails to a special format instead of maintaining the MSG format which includes the metadata.
8. Workflow
Workflow automation is one of my favorite features some practice management platforms offer. When you’re speaking to a vendor, workflow is another feature you want to make sure you fully understand the capabilities of.
For some vendors, workflow means the ability to create tasks for different members of a firm when the case is opened. For other software vendors, workflow means the ability to complete those tasks automatically, reducing the administrative burden on your law firm.
Some of the ways I’ve seen workflows used in law firm practice management software are managing client intake, opening new matters, and AR collections.
9. Client portal
A client portal is one of the newest features to be added to this list as most practice management software vendors have only recently added one to their package.
A client portal allows you to collaborate with other parties involved in a case.
Most portals include:
Access to all matter bills and the ability to pay a bill
Document sharing/repository capabilities
Shared calendar or task list
Secure communication
10. Potential new client tracking
Managing a law firm’s potential new clients has become a hot topic for practice management software vendors. Mostly because they want to grow your business to grow their business!
Tracking potential new clients is big for consumer-facing law firms, but if your main practice deals with big corporate clients or insurance defense, it won’t be as important.
If I were to walk into a law firm and ask for a list of their prospective clients, most could not quickly produce a list. If you’re not keeping a record of your prospects, you’re probably not following up with them to close new business.
By tracking your potential clients, you can also begin to track your referral sources and get a true ROI on your marketing efforts.
11. Reporting
Finally, reporting is something you think about when you’re reviewing billing software, but it’s also important for practice management.
Here are some of the topics my clients run reports on from their legal practice management software:
Task reporting – due date/completion date
Deadline report per matter
Referral sources for holiday lists
Matter shelf life
Matter status report
If you’re moving to a new legal billing or practice management software, it’s a good idea to understand all the possibilities of what can be imported. What can be transitioned over will be contingent upon the export capabilities of your current software as well as what import technology your new billing software includes.
In this post, I will detail everything you should be able to import along with some of the ‘gotchas’ that can result from what’s imported into your new legal billing software.
1. Rates/rate tables
If you’re a midsize law firm that’s been in your current legal billing software for over 10 years, there’s a good chance you have more than 100 rate tables. You’ve accumulated this many rate tables because every time one timekeeper had a slightly different rate, you had to create a new table.
When you’re discussing how to bring your rates into the new software, it’s important that you understand holistically how the program handles rates. Some allow you to create rate tables system-wide and assign the rate tables to clients/matters, while others require you to set up your timekeeper’s rate every single matter.
If you don’t convert the rate tables properly, it can create a huge headache for your firm when you go to run your first round of bills out of the new legal billing software. When you’re scoping your conversion, make sure the vendor includes a line item detailing what the rate table conversion will look like.
2. Attorneys’ initials
This is important if you expect the attorneys initials to show up on the client’s bill. Make sure the vendor can import the initials for you and display the initials on the bill layout.
3. Origination/compensation breakdowns
A lot of law firms use their legal billing software to track and calculate attorney compensation. This can include origination (an attorney earning a percentage of all fees received on a case for bringing in the client) and production (attorneys are compensated a percentage of the fees received on payments allocated to the attorney’s fees).
It’s more common for a cloud-based, legal billing software to track origination only, although some track origination and production. Make sure you understand what the legal billing software’s functionality includes and if they can import your originators and the compensation percentages, so you’re not stuck setting this up yourself.
4. Fee arrangements
Similar to origination, you want to make sure the new legal billing platform can import your fee arrangements so you don’t have to set them up manually.
This could include whether the matter requires eBilling files (LEDES 1998b, LSS, etc…) or is a flat fee matter (what is the agreed upon flat fee and when are the clients supposed to be billed), a subscription matter (how much does the client pay and how often), split billing matter (who are the involved clients and what percentage of the bill is each client paying), or contingent matter (are we billing expenses or not).
The vendor needs to import this information for you, so you’re not having to reenter it once you’re live in the new software program.
5. Fee WIP
All of your fee WIP (work in progress), meaning it has not been placed on a pre-bill or posted bill, should be imported from your previous system. A good number of vendors will be able to import this data into your new system, but you’ll want to confirm this before purchasing.
6. Unbilled expenses
Speak with the software vendor about how they can bring over expenses that have not been billed to the client. If your new and old billing software includes accounting, there is a good chance they won’t be able to tie hard costs back to the vendor bill or check in your conversion.
7. Matter starting balances vs. full billing history
There are a few options when it comes to importing your clients’ billings. Some vendors won’t bring any billing into the system and others will provide you with different options.
Matter starting balances
This is the most basic of billing data imports. If you choose this option, your first bills out of the new system will include your client’s previous balance, but you will not be able to reproduce old bills because the full history wasn’t imported.
Full billing history
If you opt for and if the vendor can provide full history, you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off in your old system. This option will give you the ability to see previous client bills and run reports (including compensation reports). A full history import will include all client bills, with the individual fee and expense entries as they were in the previous software.
8. Payments
Typically, you’ll only import payments into your new software if you’re importing full billing history. If you import payments, you’ll get the individual payments and payment distributions for compensation reports.
9. Trust balances vs. transaction history
In my experience, the majority of law firms decided to bring over a trust balance. Although, some family law firms want to see full history. This decision is typically based on whether or not law firm clients’ need to see a full history of trust transactions on their bill.
We hope this article will help you in asking the right questions to your potential software provider. If you have questions for us, feel free to reach out.
Your firm is making an investment in new legal practice management and billing software in order to achieve some desired financial and procedural improvements. And maybe you personally stuck your neck out and bet your career on this new software. There is no better way to facilitate a successful implementation than properly training your staff. In my experience, most law firms view training in one of two ways; the law firm sees training as an investment in their staff and the success of the implementation, or the firm views training as nonessential and just another way the software company tries to get an extra buck out of them.
Let me set things straight – training is a GREAT investment for your firm because you’ll learn to use the software correctly. Besides, if your staff doesn’t fully understand how to use the software, how can they take advantage of all the great benefits it brings to the table?
Here are a few tips on setting up your legal practice management and billing software training program:
1. Segment Your Staff by Job Function and Technical Aptitude
When you’re deciding how to train your staff, take a few things into account:
First, consider their job functions in the firm, because based on their jobs, they will need to learn different features. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to train a partner to enter payments into the program (unless it’s a very hands-on partner or you’re a really small firm) because the billing and accounting team will take care of the finances. But, it does make sense to train the partners to enter time into the system, which your billing and accounting staff won’t need to know.
At Centerbase, we typically break it down and do separate training sessions for attorneys, paralegals/assistants, billing staff, and accounting.
Second, consider each person’s technical aptitude. This is important because if someone catches onto the software quickly, they’ll lose focus if you’re having to stop the training session to help those who aren’t grasping it as fast.
If you can, divide the training sessions by job function and then technical aptitude, especially for larger groups like attorneys and paralegals. Since the attorneys’ and paralegals’ jobs are to interface with clients all day, they tend to become quickly distracted if they’re not being engaged with useful information.
2. Train a group of super users first
Super users will be your “boots on the ground” once the software company finishes implementation. Typically, the firm will save time and money by having someone in-house who staff can go to for basic ‘how to’ and troubleshooting questions.
If possible, I recommend doing super user training before the basic training. It is helpful to have a few extra people in the room who understand the software to help the general staff during their first training sessions (especially if the training is web-based).
3. Begin with the basics
Don’t overwhelm your staff with everything the software can do at once. At first, show your staff how to do things they could do in your previous software and/or a few of the basic new features such as navigating around a matter, using the calendar, etc. to get started.
If you’re also billing out of your practice management software, your billing/accounting team will have to dive right into using everything in the financial modules from the start.
For billing, I recommend requesting initial training to familiarize yourself with billing out of the software, and then request additional training for your first round of bills. Basically, during the second billing training session, you’ll have the trainer walk you through your first round of bills. This is very important as you don’t want to affect cashflow at the firm (that’s the quickest way to have a senior partner boot your new software right out of the firm).
Another good idea is to begin your rollout right after you send final bills out for a given month, so you have the most time possible before the next round of billing.
4. Offer a second training no more than 10 business days after the rollout
Once your staff begins using the new practice management software, they’ll generally have a list of questions or suggestions for modification (such as how the matter layout looks). To keep morale and adoption high, offer a second training session within 10 business days of your initial training. During this session, you can demonstrate additional functionality within the program as well as revisit what was taught during the first training session to tie up any loose ends.
10 business days can be a long time before you have a refresher on the software. Before the first and second training, I would recommend having a super user check-in with all staff members to see how they’re doing.
5. Continue quarterly training courses
For at least the first year, I would recommend offering quarterly training sessions on the software. If you roll out the program the way I’ve described in my article 4 Tips on How to Begin Using Practice Management Software at a Law Firm, you’ll have additional features to show them on a quarterly basis (also, most vendors offer monthly or quarterly new releases, so it’s inevitable that you’ll have new features to show your staff). Also, this is a good chance to boost the morale of those who are struggling with the change.
I hope this article was helpful – feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions on creating a legal practice management software training program.
A few years back, I was at a conference discussing legal practice management software with a payment processing vendor. She was on their partnership team, which focused on developing relationships with legal software vendors. I was shocked when she told me she had 90 new practice management products to evaluate…90!
With so many legal practice management software applications in the marketplace, it’s hard for any law firm to know where to start when deciding to change from their existing platform. To make this easier, I put together an article to help you better understand the types of options on the market, so you can quickly eliminate the categories of legal practice management software that wouldn’t work for your firm.
1. Standard practice management software
The first category of legal practice management software is your standard practice management software.
Typically, these packages include your main features like:
The biggest benefit to a standard practice management software is a low barrier to entry. Most of the software packages that fall in this category allow you to sign up for a free trial, enter information about your firm (address and billing rates), and then you’re off to the races.
Drawbacks
Although standard practice management software works for some firms, it doesn’t work for all. I find they require a lot of integrations, whether it’s with a document storage software application like Google Drive or Dropbox, an accounting application like Quickbooks or Xero, or a third party application that does anything outside of the main features I listed above.
These types of packages tend to have limited importing and exporting capabilities, especially around your billing data. This means you’re starting with a limited billing history and again if you switch off a standard practice management software application.
Best For
Standard practice management software is best for solo or small firms. A small firm can easily adapt to how the software works and most likely doesn’t have clients that require complex billing arrangements. Additionally, the firm itself probably doesn’t need compensation reporting or have enough accounts payable to require an integrated accounting system.
2. Specialized practice management software
Specialized practice management software tends to serve boutique firms that are highly-specialized in a specific practice area. These firms tend to only have one practice area (or run on their own inside a larger firm) and don’t require traditional law firm billing.
Benefits
Specialized practice management software means the vendor is only creating features that are needed specifically by that practice area. For general practice management vendors, they’re having to constantly add features that serve the majority of their client base, so you miss the very specific but helpful features one or two practice areas might need.
Because the package is specialized, it also requires less tailoring to fit your firm than a general package would require.
Drawbacks
The drawback of a specialized practice management system is the exact same as the benefit – it’s specialized. This means it can only serve a certain practice area, so it won’t work as well for a general practice firm or even a larger firm with multiple practice areas.
Best For
The majority of the specialized practice management packages I see on the market are geared toward personal injury and bankruptcy firms.
3. All-in-one practice management, billing, and accounting software
All-in-one practice management software gives you the majority of what you need in one product.
Benefits
These products are built for firms that expect to evolve over time, meaning their features are robust and deep and can change with the firm as it grows.
These packages also don’t require multiple software packages for your billing and accounting, eliminating the need for double entry. This is helpful for firms who receive a high volume of client billing and accounts payable. The elimination of this extra click ends up saving a firm a lot of time in the long run.
Finally, most of the all-in-one packages allow you to import billing data (some also allow for accounting data), which makes the transition much more tolerable for larger firms that simply can’t start from scratch.
Drawbacks
Powerful software tends to require more upfront setup, which can have high costs associated with it. This means your firm has to decide whether they want to invest in a product upfront that will serve the firm for the next 10-20 years, or if they’d prefer fewer upfront costs.
Best For
An all-in-one practice management, billing, and accounting software package is best for a midsize firm with multiple practice areas. The ideal firm for this type of software values the ability to save time by doing everything in one platform.
If you’re still unsure as to which box your firm fits in, feel free to reach out to us for a free demo. We would love to help you figure out the best solution for you.
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The cost of migrating to a cloud-based, legal practice management software can be a lot more than just the subscription price vendors advertise on their website. In my experience, there are four main costs to consider when making a migration: subscription, implementation, integrations, and other miscellaneous costs to consider. In this article, I try to break those costs down to give you a better understanding of how much it could cost your firm.
1. Subscription
The first part of the cost of legal practice management software to consider is the subscription price. For most vendors, you can find their price directly on a pricing page.
Typically, the vendors offer between 1-3 subscription tiers, with each tier offering different features and levels of support.
Vendors will also offer you multiple payment options including monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription plans. For a monthly plan, you’ll pay $10-15 more per user/month.
If you survey all the legal practice management software available on the market, you’ll find that the majority of subscriptions are priced between $40 – $110 per user/month, if paid annually. Although there is a wide range of price points, I find most firms settle on a legal practice management software in the $60 – $100 range per user/month if paid annually.
2. Implementation
The second component to the cost of legal practice management to consider is the price of implementation. A successful implementation is key to a law firm adopting practice management software. This can be an area where firms want to spend less, but if you want your investment in practice management software to be a success, I recommend thinking of this cost as an investment.
Implementation can be split into three separate buckets: data migration, setup, and training.
Let’s dive into each one:
Data migration
Data migration is the process of taking all of your client and firm data from your previous software into your new software. This can include migrating client data, calendars, documents, billing and accounting data.
Some software vendors offer a free, basic data migration. This type of migration is done using a pre-configured wizard and does not include custom fields or billing data. If you’re trying to save money and you’re ok with either not having all the information in your new system or having to go back and clean data up, this is a great option for you.
If you’re over 10 employees and you’re billing out of your new software, there is a good chance you’ll need an advanced conversion that requires a conversion specialist.
Some software companies will offer advanced conversion in-house, while others will require a certified partner. An advanced conversion will include all your client information along with some level of billing data. Converting billing and accounting data becomes more complex, hence the need for an advanced conversion. For your billing and accounting import, some vendors will only bring over starting balances while other vendors will offer starting balances or full history.
Since there’s a wide range of options that come along with an advanced conversion, these conversions can cost anywhere from $2,500 – $15,000. A lot depends on the complexity of your data and the amount of records you want brought over to the new software.
Don’t be cheap on your data conversion and don’t pick a vendor solely based on the price of conversion. Make sure you understand all the implications of bringing over more or less data.
Setup and configuration
Setup and configuration costs depend on how much you’re trying to customize your software. Think of it like buying a car. Are you purchasing a car off the lot or are you getting custom rims, upholstery, and sound systems added?
Some legal practice management software programs offer the ability to customize a lot while others are standard products. Some areas I’ve seen customized are your form layouts (custom fields), reports, workflows, and bill layouts to name a few.
Unlike the data migration, this is an area you can get away with less at first if you need to save money. You can always configure the software more as time goes on. Take the time to map out your goals for the new program and what needs to be done right away versus what can wait.
Training
Training on your new software is essential to achieve success adoption. Some software vendors offer free training, but don’t let the word free deceive you. With free training, you will simply get what you get. You won’t have much control over when the trainer comes in, nor will you have much flexibility to select a different trainer if the one given to you doesn’t meet your needs. Getting the right trainer is half the battle in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your technology investment. If the person isn’t the right fit, it could lead to poor adoption of the material.
The beauty of cloud-based software is the ability to connect or integrate all your software programs together. Some vendors will show you integrations on their demos, so make sure you know what they’re showing you so you can get an accurate cost. Common integrations I see are LawPay and Dropbox/Google Drive.
When you’re deciding which software to pick, make sure the per user price you’re considering includes the per user price of all the integrations you’ll need as well.
4. Miscellaneous costs
Finally, the fourth component to the cost of a legal practice management software is all the indirect costs. Although I can’t give you an exact figure, here are a few to consider when making your choice:
Hardware
Make sure you understand the hardware you’ll need to run the new software. For some firms, this requires purchasing new workstations.
There can also be cost savings when moving to a cloud-based legal practice management software, such as shrinking your internal server footprint.
Internet
If you’re moving to cloud-based software, you need to think about your internet speed. This is especially important if you’re going to be hosting your documents in the cloud.
Your staff will not tolerate having to wait much longer for work product to load. Most vendors will have a minimum internet speed they recommend, so make sure you talk to your sales representative about their recommendation and consider that cost.
Cost of being down
The biggest miscellaneous cost to consider is the cost of being down. If you decide to spend less on a migration and get to the end of the month only to realize your billing is a mess. What’s the cost to your firm of waiting an extra week or two to get this straightened out?
We hope that this breakdown has given you a better idea of the overall cost of legal practice management software. We want you to be fully prepared to make the best decision for your firm.
There are many similarities between managing a practice management implementation and being a coxswain on a rowing team (for those who don’t know what a coxswain is, it’s the person who sits on the end of the boat and motivates the team to row faster) – your job is to make sure everyone is working in unison to achieve a common goal. If everyone rows hard together, you win the race, but if everyone is rowing at different speeds, the boat gets turned around in a different direction.
Over the past few years, I’ve been watching law firms successfully and unsuccessfully adopt practice management software. Very rarely do you get everyone “rowing” at the same speed right from the starting gun, but there are things you can do to make the transition smoother for your employees and increase your adoption rate.
1. Begin with the highest value changes
If you’re at the point of implementing practice management software, you should have a list of the features you wanted to implement because you had to pitch this list of features to the management team by explaining the benefits. If you don’t have a list, stop what you’re doing and make one right now!
Take this list and begin putting together a plan of attack. Personally, I like to first implement the features that bring the highest value and are the easiest to implement. This way, your team members quickly see the benefit of the software and your team morale is heightened.
If you’re having a hard time prioritizing, make a list of the features. Next to the list of features create two columns, one for “highest impact” and one for “easy to implement.” For the highest impact column, take the total number of features you’ve listed and begin to number them with the lowest number as the least impactful feature and the highest number as the most impactful. Next, do this same exercise for the “easy to implement” column with the lowest number being the hardest to implement and the highest number as the easiest to implement. Then, add up each row and begin implementing the row with the highest total first.
2. Roll it out in stages
I’ve seen law firms do entire practice management, billing, and document management software implementation at once, and although it’s possible, I don’t recommend it. I also don’t recommend going from 0 to 100 using practice management software either.
Why is this? It’s a big change for your staff and it can cause you a lot of personnel headaches along with a low adoption rate of the new software.
3. Pick super users at your firm
It’s always a good idea to have a few super users on staff. These super users are typically staff members that are more technical and well-respected amongst their coworkers. These super-users will do a few things at the firm:
They’ll help troubleshoot problems once the software trainers finish.
They’ll communicate with the software vendor when there are support issues.
They’ll help boost morale when employees get frustrated with the software because they can’t figure out how to do something or a feature takes one more click than it did before.
They’ll conduct ongoing training for staff to make sure there is a high adoption rate.
They’ll take in all the ideas staff members have for making the program a better fit and either customize the software themselves or contact the vendor with a slimmed-down list of changes.
4. Invest in training
Many people view training costs as an added expense, but in reality, it is a vital investment because of its ability to boost adoption rates for any software at a firm. If this is the first time your firm has used legal practice management software, training is especially important because it’s new to your staff.
Training should be broken out into multiple sessions. In my experience, the staff begins to lose focus after about an hour.
Implementing legal practice management software is rarely a walk in the park but if you commit to the steps above and have the right implementation specialist, I am confident your team will be more willing to make the leap. If you have more questions about implementing legal software, feel free to reach out to us – we are happy to help.
Many law firms today still operate without legal practice management software. Mainly because… well, change. Each attorney and team has their own way of tracking matter-related information that’s “working for them.”
I’m here to tell you that your spreadsheets aren’t working.
There are endless reasons why you should adopt case management software, but I’ve narrowed it down to 7 specific reasons to consider:
1. Increased staff productivity
The heart of any legal practice management software is the matter. Typically, everything related to the case can be found on the matter record inside of your practice management software. This includes all party’s contact information, case documents, calendar appointments, tasks, email correspondence, notes, and billing information.
With everything in a single software, your staff knows where to look for matter-related information without having to contact a coworker to send the file over. They’ll know that if they navigate to the matter, they should be able to find the information they’re looking for.
2. Happier clients
Services like Amazon Prime have made people expect everything instantly. This is very true for your client’s expectations of case updates. With a legal practice management application (especially if it’s cloud-based) you’re able to get to all of your clients’ information from anywhere, no matter if you’re at your desk or crossing the street in New York City.
Quick updates = Happy clients
3. More complete conflict checks
If you’re able to run a conflict check in the software where most of your clients’ information resides, you’ll get a more complete conflict check.
I’ve spoken to many firms that have to run a conflict check in their billing software, against a spreadsheet, and then send out a conflict vote to make sure the attorneys don’t uncover conflicts in their own personal files.
This is also important because it not only improves the firm’s processes, but it also protects the firm and keeps them compliant with their liability insurance.
4. Better collaboration within teams
Within a legal software application, you’re able to share information between staff members. Some systems allow you to assign tasks to other coworkers and get notifications once the task is complete. Other programs have chat systems built into the application itself, so you can communicate without having to send an email, call them or get up from your desk.
Quick updates = Happy clients
5. Easier to onboard new staff
One of the hardest parts of onboarding new staff is training. A single practice management software means less software and process training.
An added benefit of some practice management applications is automated workflow. With automated workflow, you can build your processes into the program, ensuring compliance across your entire staff with minimal training needed.
6. Work from anywhere
This benefit is true if your firm picks a cloud-based practice management application. With most of the newer cloud-based, legal practice management applications, you can access your firm’s database from the web or from a native app on your iOS or Android device. This means as long as you have internet, you’ll have access to your client information.
7. Automated time entry
Many practice management applications give you the ability to capture time as you’re working. Some even capture time spent within their application and other programs attorneys use throughout the day.
Traditionally, law firms only replace their practice management and billing software every 10-20 years, so evaluating new products after all that time can be overwhelming.
Not only have all the software products changed since the time the firm purchased their current system, but the underlying technology has also changed; so the questions they should ask a software vendor have changed as well.
Over the past few years, I’ve put together a list of ‘gotcha’ questions I provide law firms transitioning to new legal software. Firms usually only ask a few, if any, of these questions when they’re speaking with software companies, but it’s important you ask each software vendor ALL of the questions below:
1. Is the software fully cloud-based?
Some cloud-based practice management and billing software packages require you to install applications on a computer for administrative purposes or in order to use specific tools. Make sure you understand the technical specifications for using their software. For instance, at Centerbase we have Microsoft Outlook and Word add-ins to track time that only work in a Windows environment. If a firm uses Mac computers, they won’t be able to use this feature properly. If you want more information on cloud-based software, check out our white paper 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing Cloud-Based Software.
2. Do a vendor’s security and data redundancy policies match the law firm’s clients’ requirements?
Make sure you fully understand how the software vendor works to protect your client data. Request a security and data redundancy whitepaper. If you work with large corporations, insurance carriers, banks, or health care providers, check if the software vendor’s security and data redundancy practices match the standard practices you’ve agreed to with your clients. Also, look into your liability insurance and the level of data security they require.
3. How can we import our current data? And better yet, how can we export our data from your system?
If your firm is like most firms, you’ve used your current software for 10-20 years and over the years, you’ve built up a lot of historical information on your clients. Talk to the sales representative (or better yet, have someone from their implementation team on the call) about what information they can import into their software.
Here are a few examples of ‘gotcha’ situations:
Emails – Most software companies can’t import emails from a previous practice management system, so you’re left with referencing the old system or losing that history. If this is something your firm uses heavily, make sure you understand the options.
Calendar – Do you need your current calendar entries synced with the new system? A lot of software vendors can only link your software with new entries created after you move over. This means you’re stuck looking at two calendars for a few months or even years.
Billing History – Do you need all of the billing history from your previous system? Many vendors won’t bring over history, instead they’ll bring over starting balances. If you’re tracking compensation or origination from reports in the software, you’ll have a hard time calculating those numbers without the billing history.
Accounting Data – I can count on one hand the number of legal billing software vendors who can bring over accounting data from a previous system – this includes journal entries or accounts payable history. Most small firms don’t bring this type of information over, but midsize firms sometimes want to.
Now on the flip side, what does an export from the new software look like?
This is a question many firms forget to ask or overlook when speaking with a practice management or billing software vendor. When you’re evaluating new software, you’re typically excited and not thinking about the potential breakup. With a cloud-based system, you don’t have access to the database (for security purposes), so the export is only as good as the tools the vendor provides you to export data.
We’ve dealt with a lot of firms migrating to Centerbase from our competitors and we routinely run into issues with billing data. Does the system link billing entries to bill records in a way that you can reconstruct bills with history? Typically they don’t, but it’s worth asking and understanding ahead of time.
4. What integrations do I need to purchase in order to do everything you’ve shown me in the demo?
I once had a client tell me they started a game while evaluating practice management and billing software. Every time they heard “we offer an integration for that” or “we have an open API” they’d take a shot (I don’t think they actually took shots since the demos were in the morning, but it makes a good story).
Sales representatives are trained to show you a cohesive demo and if the demo is going well, they sometimes forget to mention that what they’re showing you is an additional integration that requires you to pay more. At the end of the demo, make sure to ask them about all the different software they’ve shown you and how much each piece costs. Integrations can be game-changers if they’re done right (shamelessly throwing in a sales pitch: check out the Centerbase and NetDocuments integration) but typically, you have to buy both software packages in order for it to work. But don't stop there! Check out What Features Do I Need In a Billing Software.
5. How do you do [fill in the blank] in your software?
Make sure you think through all the firm’s processes and needs before your demo (or request additional demos). Then go over them with the legal practice management software vendor.
DO NOT let them tell you they can do something, instead make them show you how they do it. I’ve personally seen this happen many times, especially around billing requirements and features. If they don’t show you, there might be a difference in how their software operates and how your client needs to see something. A good example is how the software handles flat fee billing.
Overall, you’re making a big decision and you want to make sure you’re covering all the bases. No question is a bad question and a good sales representative should be willing to find the answer for you. Your legal practice management software is central to the entire firm’s operations, so make sure you do your homework.
1. Begin with the highest value changes