3 Best Practices for Billable Hours

Keeping your billing accurate and efficient is one of the most critical aspects of running a successful law firm. A strong financial strategy plays a crucial role in this process. If done correctly, it can increase profits, improve client relationships, and create financial stability for the firm.

A vital component of this strategy is accurately tracking and accounting for all billable hours. Backdocket can help your firm better track its billable hours with integrated calendars, automated billing, and invoicing processes.

Learn how your firm can benefit from practice management software to streamline the billing process and help your attorneys make the most of their billable hours.

Why Your Law Firm Needs a Solid Billing Process for Your Financial Strategy

Many law firms struggle with tracking billable hours since attorneys may spend time on non-billable activities such as networking and ongoing legal education. These activities may be crucial to your firm’s success and inform your legal knowledge when working with clients.

However, lawyers who don’t log their hours by the end of the day may cost your firm revenue. Not logging hours as soon as they happen can result in losing up to 10% of an attorney’s billable time. A delay of even one day can result in a 25% increase in lost time.

Maintaining a steady cash flow for your practice depends on integrating your legal billing process into your financial strategy. Effective billing practices for your strategy include transparent client communication, accurate billing reports, and scheduling to track your billable hours.

A streamlined billing process using backdocket can prevent your firm from falling behind on rent or mortgage payments, utilities, and payroll. By reducing the time spent on billing and minimizing non-billable hours, you can create more opportunities for billable hours.

3 Best Practices for Tracking Billable Hours

A law firm’s success relies on tracking billable hours, and implementing best practices for timekeeping can help streamline the billing process and increase profitability. These strategies can help you track billable hours, including automation and calendar integration with backdocket.

1. Account for All Billable Hours

Encourage all staff members in your firm to track all their hours to gain insight into how they spend their time and help you make informed decisions about task management and allocation. They can take notes on their daily tasks, review incoming calls and emails, and track their time.

With backdocket, you can generate reports on your intake process, case status, and marketing KPIs. These reports can help you track individual performance and firm-wide progress on how much time employees spend managing leads and converting them into clients.

2. Automate Your Billing and Invoicing

Lawyers can generate invoices based on their billable hours using backdocket. Automating billing and invoicing can make it easier to track billable hours and ensure accurate and timely invoicing based on those hours. Your firm can also use backdocket to send follow-up reminders to clients when payment is due.

Billable hours can include case-related expenses for expert witnesses, lab tests, court filing, and medical record requests. If a lawyer doesn’t track these expenses, they can add up and cause cash flow issues.

Backdocket ensures a steady flow of on-time payments, avoiding financial issues that can stall your firm’s success. You can use the practice management software to track expenses, invoice clients promptly, automate check requests, and manage claim logs.

3. Use a Calendar

Lawyers typically review their billable hours by examining their calendars and email communications at the end of the week or month. However, accurately recalling the time spent on a specific task or the details of a phone call can be challenging.

Backdocket’s calendar integrates all your calendar events from your Microsoft 365 or Google Calendar. No matter where you update your calendar, all your events will appear across all calendars. If you have meetings all day or want to designate time for specific tasks, you can document your billable work quickly.

Streamline Your Billable Hours with backdocket

Implementing the best practices for tracking billable hours can improve the efficiency of your law firm. By tracking all hours, automating billing, and using a calendar, you can optimize your time and resources for maximum profitability.

Call us today for a demo on how backdocket can streamline your firm’s billing processes and boost its profitability.