The Oklahoma Bar Journal February 2023

If you want your firm to stream line the billing and invoicing process, it is time to stop using handwrit ten timesheets. 2 The more quickly bookkeeping receives the time cap ture in digital format, the more effi cient the process will become. So it is best just to begin with timesheets completed digitally. Today, you do not even have to be a great typist to accomplish this. There are several paths to success: 1) Capture your time in your practice management solu tion’s time capture feature. This is the most efficient practice management solu tion when you finish a task, and the feature locates the data where the invoices will ultimately be prepared. If you quickly want to review all billing entries on a single client file, this can be easily done. You should also do some research to determine what app or other tools your solution provides to do a proper billing entry through your smartphone when you are out of the office and not returning that day. 2) Invest in a stand-alone time capture and billing tool to do this. I generally cau tion against this approach because a subscription to these tools is not much cheaper than a subscription these tools and much, much more. But it may be right for some smaller firms. 3) Build some simple digital timesheets. These can be either Word documents with tables included that look like a paper, carbonless billing sheet or in Excel. Make to practice management software, which includes way, as you are likely already working in the

There are apps that allow one to capture time on a mobile device. The second and most important step is to only do digital time cap ture. Time capture and invoicing are a primary feature of all practice management software solutions and often a primary motivation for subscribing to such a solution. Handwritten billing sheets are a long-standing tradition in law firms. But in today’s world, this practice limits efficiency. As noted, handwritten billing sheets for time capture are not data but represent paper documents that must be processed to create useful data, i.e. , billing entries to be included in an invoice. But this data-conversion process is hobbled by the fact that handwriting, particularly hurried handwriting of busy professionals like doctors and lawyers, can some times be hard to interpret. So it is necessary to have the timekeeper review all entries after they are included in the invoice to catch any errors. That causes a delay. If that lawyer has a trial or personal emer gency at the wrong time, many invoices could be delayed waiting on the lawyer’s proofreading (and if the lawyer does find a correction or edit, the process is restarted for the billing to be edited).

TIME CAPTURE The primary functions in legal billing are time capture, expense capture and invoicing. It has long been a “truism” of law practice management that lawyers who contemporaneously record their time spent on client matters make more money than those who do not. But is that actually true, or could it be related to other aspects of their behavior? Maybe lawyers who contemporaneously record their time are more disciplined? Of course, many successful contingency fee lawyers never keep time records. But what is certainly true is that any lawyer who has tried to reconstruct their timekeeping records after a busy week when they “didn’t have time” knows there is a significant likelihood they will omit to cap ture part of their time. So the first simple step is to record time contemporaneously, and then at the end of the day check to make certain you have recorded your time before you leave work. It will just take a few moments. Certainly events will sometimes keep you from doing that. Then you either catch up on billing entries the next morn ing, or you can use a mobile app.

It has long been a “truism” of law practice management that lawyers who contemporaneously record their time spent on client matters make more money than those who do not.

44 | FEBRUARY 2023

THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL