Online time-tracking using Harvest at Harvest’s motto is “Time is Money. The purpose of this article is to introduce you to a few of these programs so that you can determine what will work best in your practice. As a result, many software companies take advantage of lawyers with slick sales presentations and offering complicated, overpriced programs.Īll is not lost because there are many simple, inexpensive time-billing programs that are just as good, if not better, than many of the legal billing programs on the market. This is because lawyers are generally not savvy about technology because they are busy with litigation. When looking at various programs, you must be very careful. You might, for example, input on Google “best hourly billing program for small law office” and see what pops up. You can input desired search terms on Google and you are certain to find someone, somewhere discussing needs similar to yours. To make the best decision on a program best suited for your office, research the Internet. When looking for a program, one can be overwhelmed by the many choices and options. There are many billing and time keeping programs out there. Instead, when filling out time or billing entries, in the notes section for each entry they can input names of people called, issues researched and other notes to the file. Many attorneys do not maintain daily diaries or logs on work performed. Attorneys can kill two birds with one stone in this regard. He was able to show the jury not only how much work he had done on the case, but also the detailed tasks he performed each day. What contributed to his countering Plaintiff’s claims was that the attorney kept very detailed billing entries. He successfully defended against the case. There was an attorney in San Francisco who was sued for malpractice. If it’s low, you can figure out what happened and hopefully prevent this from occurring in the future. For example, by reviewing your time records and knowing the amount you recovered, you can figure out what your “hourly rate” was in that particular case. You can also use billing programs to analyze completed cases. For example, if your time records indicate that you spend most of the day on administrative matters rather than client cases, this may indicate that you need to hire clerical staff so that you can spend time on billable matters. Billing software will enable you to get an accurate breakdown of the tasks that you do every day. By keeping accurate time records, you will be in a better position to evaluate settlement offers and assess the financial consequences of proceeding. By using billing programs you will know exactly how many hours you are putting into a specific case and chances are, it’s more than you thought. If you don’t keep track of the time you spent on a particular case or have detailed invoices, you will not get as much in fees and will lose money. Judges want detailed bills to support their granting of attorneys’ fees. Being able to provide the court with detailed, accurate bills that specifically describe the work you did on the case will be very persuasive to the court. Why plaintiffs’ attorneys should track time We will also discuss how not keeping track of time worked can be a severe detriment to profitability. The thrust of this article will argue that there are multiple benefits to a contingent plaintiff counsel using time-keeping and billing software. In other words, most plaintiff attorneys do not use billing programs. Fact: Most plaintiffs’ attorneys handling cases on a contingent basis do not see the need to keep track of the time expended on a matter.
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