Practice management
Stay on track with these time tracking software tools for law firms
Nicole Noir.
For most lawyers, capturing all of your billable time is a top priority. After all, many lawyers still charge by the billable hour, and you won’t get paid for the billable time if you fail to keep up with it. This is even more important now that we are in the midst of a pandemic, as cash flow is less predictable due to the impact of COVID-19.
Before the pandemic, the old-fashioned way of tracking time using a pen and paper timesheets was sometimes sufficient, but not anymore. Since many companies have a fully or partially remote workforce, an outdated time tracking system just doesn’t work when team members are in different locations.
Trying to rig a paper system to capture billable time is not only an inefficient practice, it actually ends up wasting valuable time that could be better spent on billable activities. Whether you like it or not, if your business wants to ensure that all the time is captured and billed, even when employees are working remotely, your best option is to move to a more streamlined cloud-based time tracking system. and centralized.
The good news is that many cloud-based time tracking software tools have been around for almost a decade and are well tested. Depending on your firm’s needs, there are a plethora of options available, ranging from robust law firm management or legal billing software with built-in time tracking features to standalone time tracking software.
Whichever option you choose, lawyers at your firm will be able to capture the time no matter where they are using a computer or mobile device. This will allow time to be tracked and captured at the same time, ensuring that your business captures – and invoices – all of its billable time.
In this article, only cloud-based time tracking tools will be covered; Cloud-based legal invoicing and payment processing tools have been covered in previous columns this year. It should also be noted that whenever you entrust your law firm’s data to a third party, as you do when using cloud-based time tracking software, you have an ethical obligation to scrutinize carefully. the technology provider who will host and store your data. .
This includes ensuring that you understand how the data will be handled by that company; where are the servers on which the data will be stored; who will have access to the data; and how and when it will be backed up, among other things. With that in mind, here are some of the most notable time tracking software tools for you to consider.
The first option is to take advantage of the time tracking features built into law firm management software like Smokeball, MyCase or Clio, or full-fledged legal billing software like Timesolv Legal, Time59 or Bill4Time. Using this software, the time can usually be tracked and entered from any location using a laptop or desktop computer. Most of these products also offer a mobile application which includes a timer and the ability to track and enter the time from any device connected to the Internet.
One of the benefits of this approach is that the billable time you enter is automatically associated with the correct subject, making it a simple task to create and edit an invoice, then send it to your customer with the click of a button. Plus, the time tracking feature is often built into the price you already pay to use the software suite.
Of course, features vary from program to program, so be sure to test the time tracking features of each law firm management program before committing to them. Some will include features that others will not, but depending on your business needs, the additional features may not be required. It is therefore important to make sure that you fully understand the features available.
For example, some law firm management software, such as MyCase and Smokeball, include built-in passive time tracking capabilities. This means that the software tracks your online activities throughout the day and then allows you to capture any billable activities that have been tracked by the program but not yet entered there. So if you wrote and sent an email but failed to enter the time spent doing so in the software, it will ask you to enter that time and link it to the related subject.
There are also stand-alone tools available that passively track time. The first is Chrometa. While Chrometa is not designed specifically for lawyers, it does integrate with a number of different law firm management systems.
Another option is Ping, which is an artificial intelligence time tracking tool specially designed for lawyers that works with a law firm’s invoicing software to automatically associate a timing event captured by Ping with the probable client. for which it was made. This is where AI comes in: Ping analyzes the work in progress and the files or people involved and predicts which customers the billable time should be associated with.
Finally, there are many basic stand-alone time tracking tools available that do not include passive time tracking and were not designed specifically for lawyers. Even so, for some companies, they may still be suitable. Two popular options are Timetracker and Timewerks. Using these tools, you can track and enter time from any computer or mobile device, ensuring you capture all of your billable time. But in most cases, the time entered is not automatically associated with your law firm’s billing system. However, it is still more efficient than keeping track of your time on a paper timesheet.
Tracking time doesn’t have to be a painful process. Today’s technology makes it easier than ever to track and capture billable hours accurately and efficiently without disrupting your workflow unnecessarily. So whether your business is looking for a simple stand-alone software or a more robust and transparent option, there is a time tracking tool that is perfect for your business needs.
Nicole Black is a lawyer, author, reporter in Rochester, New York, and legal technology evangelist at MyCase, a law firm management software for small businesses. She is the nationally renowned author of Cloud computing for lawyers and is co-author of Social media for lawyers: the next frontier, both published by the American Bar Association. She is also co-author of Criminal law in New York, a Thomson Reuters treatise. She is a regular columnist for ABAJournal.com, Above the Law and the Daily Record, has authored hundreds of articles for other publications, and is a regular speaker at conferences on the intersection of law and emerging technologies. Follow her on Twitter @nikiblack, or it can be attached to [email protected].
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