Five ways Firm Central revolutionizes your legal billing procedures

By: Terry Rheault
Published: May 14, 2018

I speak with dozens of lawyers at small law firms every month, and I’m always surprised by how they manage their legal billing process. Shockingly little has changed since I worked at a small firm before joining Thomson Reuters a few years ago.

Here’s the typical drill:

1. As lawyers go about their day, they write down time spent on a matter on a slip of paper: “John Smith Brief – 5 minutes.”
2. At the end of the week or month, they gather these slips and sort them by matter.
3. They then deliver them to an assistant, who:
   • Interprets and records the scrawls on each slip
   • Calculates time and expenses invested for each client
   • Types an invoice

Every month, small law firms across the nation churn out thousands upon thousands of these invoices, but are they accurate? With so many manual steps it is very likely that time records get misplaced, a lawyer’s handwriting is misread, or typos are made.

And who has time to accurately proofread an invoice? Especially when you’ve already taken the better part of an hour to produce it?

Meanwhile, instead of enduring this tedious ordeal, they could crank out an accurate, highly professional, easy-to-understand invoice in about two minutes with Firm Central Time & Billing software.

Too many lawyers at small firms, however, are just too busy to consider what technology can do for them – they mistakenly think it will take too much time to learn anyway. At least, that’s what a lot of the lawyers I talk to tell me.

That is, until they participate in a Firm Central free trial and experience the legal billing software for themselves. It eliminates everything that makes the legal billing process painful. Furthermore, it makes every aspect of firm financial management light-years more efficient in the following ways.

Track time as you work on the easy-to-read and easy-to-use Firm Central Time & Billing dashboard – it’s integrated directly into what you’re working on within a matter. Firm Central offers several time-tracking options, but my favorite is using the timer in the upper left corner:

• A click starts a clock that’s connected to a matter.
• Ready to move on to another project? Get interrupted? Click the clock to stop it.
• Forget to stop the clock? No big deal. It’s simple to reset.
• Ready to start working on the matter again? Click the clock to start it.
• Need to start working on something else? You can create a second, third, fourth, etc., timer.
• Done with the project? Click again to submit the time.

Firm Central is cloud based, so you can do all of this even if you are working outside of your office. You can easily track your time from anywhere with your smartphone, laptop, or tablet.

You can easily log your expenses directly into the matter within Firm Central. When entering it, you can type a description or use an expense code. Firm Central offers prepackaged options such as copy, courier, and filing fees, and you can also create customized codes. Furthermore, you can see all the expenses for a given matter, which can be selected and automatically compiled into an invoice.

You can easily log your expenses directly into the matter within Firm Central. When entering it, you can type a description or use an expense code. Firm Central offers prepackaged options such as copy, courier, and filing fees, and you can also create customized codes. Furthermore, you can see all the expenses for a given matter, which can be selected and automatically compiled into an invoice.

Before you finalize the invoice, Firm Central will create a preview – we call it a prebill – that allows you to review details to ensure everything is perfect. Revising the invoice is easy and intuitive. You can also easily add more detailed descriptions if you want.

Once you’ve approved the prebill, you can finalize your invoice and either download it to send electronically via the secure client portal or print it and mail it to your client.

Firm Central integrates with QuickBooks so all of your firm’s financials work together. This saves time and increases consistency because it eliminates duplicate entries of clients, matters, invoice totals, and payments applied to matters. You can see financials for every matter and every client at a glance, including outstanding balances.

Furthermore, with Firm Central time and billing software you can:

• Automatically deduct payments from trust accounts
• Set up specific fee arrangements for each matter
• Generate billing groups organized by matter, client, practice area, or lawyer

Considering the time and effort that too many small law firms go through each month to invoice, it’s not surprising that more than one in 10 small law firms don’t track profit, and even more don’t track revenue according to the 2017 State of U.S. Small Law Firms Study. Imagine the time and effort it would take to manually compile performance reports based on:

• Time by matter or client
• Time by lawyer
• Expense by matter
• Accounts receivable
• Trust account balances
• Collection realization by matter
• Collection realization by clients
• Write-offs

Of course, Firm Central Time & Billing software can run these reports in a couple of minutes. You also can view a financial performance dashboard to track your firm’s financial health in real time.

The lawyers I speak with do admit there is one major drawback to Firm Central, though. They now have to forgive themselves for not taking advantage of it sooner.