Paperless Billing Solution for Law Practice

A clutter free and well-organized office desk is what every attorney likes to see when they enter the office every day. Unfortunately, they’re often annoyed when they realize they have a desk stacked high with mountains of documents that need to be sorted through. Because lawyers are usually busy, they rarely find the time to properly organize their documents. In order for them to stay on top of their daily tasks, attorneys frequently keep their most critical papers stacked at the top of the pile so that they can better find what they need. Additionally, if attorneys are using an antiquated accounting system based on paper time sheets and invoices, the clutter may increase even more. Meaning, on top of having to manage their preexisting repository of papers and notes, they also have to track and maintain their day-to-day time logs and expenses. In all, it’s a system that’s flawed at best, and impossible at worst.

Going Paperless is the New Trend

Today, the trend is to go green and embrace the transition to digital form instead of trying to manually track hundreds of printed documents. The less paper documents a law firm has to keep track of, the easier it becomes to manage and organize the office. But, going paperless doesn’t mean that the firm has to get rid of all their official documents. Instead, it means substituting paper-based work with an efficient legal software to eliminate potential delays in the day-to-day workflow and improve firm-productivity. Using a cloud based solution for time tracking and billing will cut down on cost and clutter, and allow for immediate access to critical documents. In using a quality legal billing solution, law firms can establish a digital workflow for tracking time, billing, reporting, and data analysis.

Paperless Process for Time Tracking & Billing

The transition from a filing cabinet to a paperless practice differs for each firm based on their internal procedures and practices. However, certain critical processes like time sheet entry, creating invoices, and maintaining trust funds are required to be digital -for all law firms.

1. Track Time Digitally

It’s a tedious process for lawyers to manually prepare time sheets, enter the number of hours worked, and generate accurate invoices. If they need to refer back to older documents, they need to thumb through the entire repository to find it. The system can quickly consume hours of work time because an extensive catalog of paper documents need to be recorded and maintained. Luckily, replacing a paper based process with a digital cloud system will simplify time tracking complexities and make the entire process easier to manage. By merely reducing the amount of required paperwork, and eliminating the vast expanse of clutter, lawyers can maintain a streamlined workflow that delivers immediate access to all necessary files.

2. Replace Paper Bills with Billing Software

The traditional method of manually creating bills and sending them to clients can take hours of work because it involves checking the billable hours, doing manual calculations (as per fee arrangements), and attentively preparing bills without any mistakes. Not to mention how much time is consumed in searching records and re-entering changes for each transaction, making it impossible to retrieve data on demand. If manual adjustments are required for a fee arrangement or a particular transaction, it can take hours to recalculate the invoice amount. For lawyers using a cloud based automated billing system, the entire process is modernized into a much more efficient system. This means, when one entry is changed the system automatically updates the entire transaction and invoice. Plus, automated billing software allows users to email bills directly from the system byway of the Outlook plugin. By leveraging a high-quality billing software, attorneys can take advantage of the multiple features that make it easy to manage the entire billing process without having to worry about handling heavy paperwork.

TimesManager is a cloud based Legal billing software designed specifically for law firms to efficiently manage time tracking, invoicing & billing activities. TimesManager Attorney billing software offers accessibility to time and expense tracking, split billing, CRM and document management. To make the bill processing more efficient, the software also integrates with LEDES, ABA and UTBMS task code applications.

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