Batley Family Law had an inefficient and inconsistent way of tracking attorney time.
Quick tasks, such as responding to a client email or text, or making a phone call, were often overlooked and unaccounted for. High performers in particular would jump from one task to the next without pausing to capture the time they spent.
Consequently, the attorneys at Batley Family Law spent hours every month retroactively reconciling and recording their hours.
Challenges
Capturing lost billable hours
Bobbie Batley, Managing Partner at Batley Family Law, spent about eight hours a month recording her time after the fact.
“I would have three screens open, comparing the time I recorded with my emails and calendar to see what I missed,” says Bobbie.
Even then, not all hours were captured and recorded.
“Anybody will tell you that if you don’t capture time in the minute, you’re losing time,” she says.
Inconsistent timekeeping also made it more difficult for partners to manage their teams. They couldn’t be certain that all hours were tracked, so it was hard to assign appropriate caseloads and assess team performance.
It was a source of stress that ate into Bobbie’s personal life.
“I would get up earlier on Saturday or stay up later on Sunday night to enter my time. It was affecting my family, and I would start the week already feeling behind,” she says.
Delays in entering time also impacted the firm’s billing cycle. The firm’s office manager had to wait until everybody completed their time entries before sending out invoices.
Anybody will tell you that if you don’t capture time in the minute, you’re losing time.
“We couldn’t bill out one attorney at a time; we had to bill everyone. So if I was behind in entering my time, it put everyone behind, which affected our monthly revenue,” says Bobbie.
The firm used Tabs3 as its time capture tool, but the software wasn’t integrated with any of the firm’s other systems, such as calendaring and billing. They needed a better system—ideally one with automated time capture functionality to ensure all billable hours were tracked without overburdening attorneys and staff.
Fortunately, Centerbase has the time capture functionality that Batley Family Law needed—and a whole lot more.
Solution
Integrated and intuitive timekeeping
Batley Family Law implemented the Centerbase firm management platform to automate the capture of billable hours—and by solving this problem they created a cascade of downstream improvements.
Automated time capture
With Centerbase’s automated time capture feature, users are prompted to enter their time as they perform different tasks for clients.
“The thing I love the most is that when I send an email, it prompts me to enter the time,” says Bobbie.
Similarly, if a client meeting is on her calendar, that time is automatically captured and recorded.
Centerbase feels like it’s akin to AI. It always knows what’s happening because it’s connected to the calendar.
“If I block off time in my calendar to prepare for a client’s custody trial, that time will automatically appear in the billable events dashboard,” says Bobbie.
Even tasks such as phone calls are easily tracked by using a Centerbase private number.
“Clients would text and ask to jump on a call, and that time was frequently lost. Now I can call them through my Centerbase number, which automatically captures the time,” says Bobbie.
With these features, time capture happens seamlessly with little human intervention.
“Centerbase feels like it’s akin to AI,” says Bobbie. “It feels like it always knows what’s happening because it’s connected to the calendar.”
Centerbase also easily handles different billing rates for different roles—and even different functions within those roles.
“We have an employee who is becoming a certified divorce financial analyst,” explains Bobbie. “We can track the time when they are doing that work for the client and bill it out at the appropriate higher rate.”
Accurate data for managing teams and caseloads
Now that all billable hours are tracked, managing attorneys and attorneys can assign caseloads and assess performance with confidence.
They can also spot performance issues early with Centerbase dashboards to get people back on track.
“I used to have to run a report at the end of the month and try to figure out why a person wasn’t billing enough hours,” she says. “Now I can review hours any time I wish to do so.”
With complete information, Bobbie can easily determine whether a drop in billable hours is the result of illness or not enough casework being assigned.
Vetting and approving bills online
With everyone at the firm recording their billable hours as they work, the firm no longer experiences delays caused by attorneys needing to get caught up with their time entries.
The billing process has further been streamlined with the adoption of the Centerbase ePre-bill feature.
Rather than print their bills, manually edit them, and return them to the office manager for updating, Bobbie reviews and approves client bills online.
“If I make a change to a bill that she’s not sure about, she can make a note asking me to confirm. It then kicks back to me so I can go in and confirm. It’s a quick 10-minute turnaround versus manually going back and forth with each other three times,” says Bobbie.
Results
More time for client work and a shorter billing cycle
With Centerbase, Bobbie estimates that she and her team save 44 hours every month by not having to enter their billable hours retroactively.
That’s valuable time that Bobbie, her attorneys, and staff can apply to client work. Bobbie estimates that she alone is saving eight hours a month. At her hourly billing rate of $450 an hour, she can generate potential new revenue of $3,600 per month.
Centerbase frees up my time, which frees up my ability to produce more billable hours.
The firm’s billing process has also dramatically improved with Centerbase. The firm sends bills to clients about 10 days faster than before, which helps them receive payment that much sooner.
Today, Bobbie can’t imagine going back to the firm’s previous time-tracking solution.
“At the end of the day, we don’t have anything to sell but our time,” says Bobbie. “And if we don’t track that time, we might as well be a free service.”
