Legal Billing Software (a Little Bit of History)
Lawyers have always been able to find a way to send out their bills.
Whether the tracking of time was accomplished by a note in the correspondence section of their written file which was typed up by a legal assistant, or a separate entry was made on a pad of paper with their other time entries, it resulted in time being billed to their clients.
So what is the big deal about how the lawyer keeps track of their time? Just ask the lawyer who practiced the old fashioned way, how many hours they worked a month? The usual range was around 200.
And then ask them how many hours did they bill in a month? The usual answer was around 150.
Ask them what they were doing during the other 50 hours.
Some of that time is not appropriate to bill.
But they will invariably tell you that many of those 50 hours is time they worked on client work but forgot to bill.
At today's rates, finding just half that time would amount to an extra $60,000 a year.
Beginning in the 1980s Computers started to show up in law offices and legal billing software started to become available.
By the 1990s many lawyers were using some type of installed legal software.
Depending on the program and user the lawyer was prompted to keep track of time contemporaneously in the program and mysteriously some of the 50 hours that had earlier slipped away started to be billed.
Initially legal software programs were sold as discrete, separate programs.
One program would keep track of time.
Another would create and send out a bill.
A third program would be used for calendaring.
A fourth program for accounting, etc.
That system worked well for the conglomerates that sold the discrete programs, not so well for lawyers.
The lawyer would need to move the information from one program to the next to have complete information.
While having additional revenue from found time was a good thing, spending all the additional time to make the information useful, was a waste of time.
Something had to give.
The next iteration was that some of the legal software programs were sold in tandem so that some of the functions matched up.
The solution was not complete, but some of the wasted time was addressed.
Ultimately, more complete solutions which started to address all the informational needs of an attorney on one platform were developed.
One such platform is Complete Law.
There the attorney has in one place the timekeeping, calendaring, billing and accounting functions.
The lawyer would still create a document on a separate program, word or word perfect, but even those documents were managed on the platform.
All of the information on a particular client matter, like time, calendared events, billing info, and documents were all accessible in one place.
While it was great that all the information was available in one place.
It was not so great that the only place you could access it was also in one place, your office.
Fortunately, the internet has un-tethered the lawyer from being tied to their office and still allows the attorney to have access to all the information they need on one platform.
Online legal software allows an attorney to remotely access their legal billing software and get out a proper bill, without having to go to their law office.
Whether the tracking of time was accomplished by a note in the correspondence section of their written file which was typed up by a legal assistant, or a separate entry was made on a pad of paper with their other time entries, it resulted in time being billed to their clients.
So what is the big deal about how the lawyer keeps track of their time? Just ask the lawyer who practiced the old fashioned way, how many hours they worked a month? The usual range was around 200.
And then ask them how many hours did they bill in a month? The usual answer was around 150.
Ask them what they were doing during the other 50 hours.
Some of that time is not appropriate to bill.
But they will invariably tell you that many of those 50 hours is time they worked on client work but forgot to bill.
At today's rates, finding just half that time would amount to an extra $60,000 a year.
Beginning in the 1980s Computers started to show up in law offices and legal billing software started to become available.
By the 1990s many lawyers were using some type of installed legal software.
Depending on the program and user the lawyer was prompted to keep track of time contemporaneously in the program and mysteriously some of the 50 hours that had earlier slipped away started to be billed.
Initially legal software programs were sold as discrete, separate programs.
One program would keep track of time.
Another would create and send out a bill.
A third program would be used for calendaring.
A fourth program for accounting, etc.
That system worked well for the conglomerates that sold the discrete programs, not so well for lawyers.
The lawyer would need to move the information from one program to the next to have complete information.
While having additional revenue from found time was a good thing, spending all the additional time to make the information useful, was a waste of time.
Something had to give.
The next iteration was that some of the legal software programs were sold in tandem so that some of the functions matched up.
The solution was not complete, but some of the wasted time was addressed.
Ultimately, more complete solutions which started to address all the informational needs of an attorney on one platform were developed.
One such platform is Complete Law.
There the attorney has in one place the timekeeping, calendaring, billing and accounting functions.
The lawyer would still create a document on a separate program, word or word perfect, but even those documents were managed on the platform.
All of the information on a particular client matter, like time, calendared events, billing info, and documents were all accessible in one place.
While it was great that all the information was available in one place.
It was not so great that the only place you could access it was also in one place, your office.
Fortunately, the internet has un-tethered the lawyer from being tied to their office and still allows the attorney to have access to all the information they need on one platform.
Online legal software allows an attorney to remotely access their legal billing software and get out a proper bill, without having to go to their law office.
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