Today’s busy law office calls for optimal efficiency. As attorneys and law firms compete for clients they are routinely challenged to deliver services at lower costs with greater efficiency, thus firms develop practice-specific processes and utilize contemporary technologies to assist in meeting such challenges.
Capturing all billable time and generating invoices in a timely manner are critical for law firm profitability. Legal billing software is one way to improve compliance and cut costs.
What Does Legal Billing Software Do?
A legal software should include everything you need to maintain client matters and contact lists, perform conflict checks, enter billable time and costs, record cash receipts, manage trust and retainer accounts, and generate bills and management reports. Applications enable an integrated solution to automate case management, tracking, client histories and contracts as well as billing and accounting activities.
Good time tracking software pays for itself. Being able to precisely track the time spent on various projects lets you bill your clients accurately and manage your time more efficiently. Time tracking software programs should be easy to learn and use, and include reporting and billing features.
Why Use Legal Billing Software?
Legal software is an efficient way to handle your firm’s financial records. Nowadays, time and billing software is used by hundreds of lawyers in almost every practice, to better track and bill their time. A few advantages of this automated software include:
* Accuracy: Legal software offers an accurate bookkeeping system that helps maintain the highest standards of compliance, which is extremely important for any legal firm. Tracking and managing time and expenses in a timely and professional manner is key to firm profitability and translates to shortened turnaround time for collections. * Ease of Use: The best part is that legal billing software can be used by anyone with little or no training. That means you can track the bank activity of your law firm and reconcile accounts when needed, quickly and without sweating.
* Easy to Install: As a standalone application, legal billing software can be installed easily, takes minimal time to set up, configure, and use.
* Automation: The key feature of billing software is that it automates recurrent billing cycles. If you have regular or repeat clients, or if you’re consistently invoicing a certain company for the provision of products or services, the software eliminates a lot of unnecessary paperwork and hassles by creating new invoices automatically.
* Multiple Users: If your firm uses a wired or wireless network, your billing software can be set up to support multiple users across your entire network. You can create additional password protections to ensure that only authorized users and employees are able to access your bills and invoices.
* Time Saver: The major advantage of billing software is that it sharply reduces the amount of time and labor that you or your employees need to spend creating invoices. By automating the process, you can collect payment more quickly and enjoy efficiency improvements that will resonate throughout your entire organization.
Thomas Davidson, principal of the information technology consulting division for Rippe & Kingston, is the author of article on legal billing software and legal case management. Rippe & Kingston Systems, Inc. is an international information technology solutions and services firm with clients in 43 states and nine countries.