In the competitive landscape of legal services, achieving, or indeed surpassing, billable hour targets is pivotal for the sustainability and growth of law firms. Yet, many find themselves grappling with the question of why they’re not hitting these critical benchmarks.
The billable hour conundrum
At its core, the billable hour is a straightforward concept, yet its execution can be fraught with inaccuracies and missed opportunities. Law firms told us in our Legal Sector Trends Report survey that their biggest forms of profit leakage were missing time entries at 37% and inaccurate time entries at 23%.
The crux of the problem often boils down to human errors and inefficiencies in time tracking. Delay in logging time entries or outright omission due to oversight represents the most common pitfalls that law firms face. The implications of such errors are far-reaching, affecting not only revenue but also client trust and firm reputation.
Identifying lost hours
On average, a fee-earner at a law firm will spend over 66 hours a year manually inputting time recording entries that could otherwise be recorded; and even then, they omit 222 billable hours worked. That’s 288 billable hours that go towards their targets and towards the bottom line.
Moreover, firms typically only collect 89% of what they bill, with fee discounts and complaints a major factor.
By harnessing the power of time capture software, law firms experience immediate improvements in their billing accuracy and efficiency.
We’ve devised a time capture calculator that uses these figures, to reveal the added revenue possible through time recording software as a tangible number across your practice.
Consequently, the adoption of time capture software translates into a substantial increase in revenue, demonstrating a clear return on investment. Through correcting missing or inaccurate time entries, firms unlock their full earning potential, ensuring that every billable minute is accounted for and converted into revenue.
To read the full article, click here.