Make More Rain : hr, cash flow issues

E-billing Can Increase Law Firm Partner Incomes

Admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:15:00 GMT

In the January 3, 2006, edition of Law.com’s LegalTechnology, Michael Kraft and Robert Enholm ask the question "How long will it be before all lawyers undertake e-billing?” Michael stopped by the Juris booth at New York LegalTech yesterday and we talked a little more about the subject.

Just about every mid-sized law firm doing defense work has at least one client who requires e-billing. Most law firms consider that requirement to be a burden. That is understandable. Any exception to the normal and customary procedures followed by a business is disruptive and expensive.

What if e-billing was the norm and mailed paper copies were the exception? You might be surprised to learn that your present billing software has automatic electronic billing built in. I know that this is true for Juris software, and I would expect to see that capability in most full-feature law office business systems.

In the Juris system, law firms have the option at the client and matter level to indicate that the bill, after editing and approval, is to be automatically e-mailed to the law firm’s client in the format preferred by the client—PDF, html, rich text, etc. Copies of the electronic bills are retained in the Juris system so that the need for paper file copies of bills is eliminated, and the people-intensive process of printing, folding, envelope inserting and filing is eliminated. Postage and paper costs go away. The delay between when the bills are printed and the mailman delivers the bill is eliminated. It is faster, cleaner and cheaper, and the firm gets paid quicker.

For those firms who aren’t ready to make the plunge, consider using the built-in multiple copy features to automatically e-mail an information copy to the case or matter contact while sending a paper bill copy directly to the client’s accounts payable department for processing

E-billing is another tool for increasing per-partner income. Why not experiment by giving your new engagements the option to choose between e-mail and paper? In addition, discuss with that new client procedures to help your client process the firm’s bill for prompt payment. Explain that payment doesn’t eliminate their right to dispute charges. If the client is a business or organization, ask if you can send the payment copy of the bill directly to an accounting contact for immediate processing while providing an information copy for the legal contact’s review.

Take Your Law Firm Office on the Road

Admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:49:24 GMT

I'm in the New York Hilton attending the LEGALTECH® conference. This year I brought my office with me.

I have been so pleased with a recent $215.00 purchase I wanted to let you know about it. It is a travel printer—a mini-printer from Canon, their IP90. It is one of those purchases where, after making it, you don’t know why you waited so long or how you got along without it.

I travel with a rolling computer bag, and the four pound IP90 rides inside right along with the Dell notebook computer. Here are the dimensions:

Width: 12.2 inches
Height: 2 inches
Depth: 6.9 inches

The little thing prints 16 pages per minute (12 for color) and the quality, both regular and color, is extraordinary. The caveat is that the ink cartridges are also extraordinary—extraordinarily small. So you would be advised to always travel with an extra set.

In an earlier post, I recommended that you add to your road warrior kit a device that converts your high-speed hotel connection into a wireless network-- the D-Link DWL-G730AP Wireless Pocket Router. With the iP90 and the Pocket Router, your hotel room has all the comforts of home…your office home, that is. Increased productivity means more partner income.

Both devices are available on Amazon.com. The iP90 is $215.00 and the D-Link DWL-G730AP Wireless Pocket Router and was available for $55.99.

Why Are Law Firms Slow to Bill Their Clients?

Admin — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 20:49:53 GMT

I enjoyed reading Andy Peters’ article recently in the Daily Report. He was reviewing the highlights of a session that placed two prominent law firm attorneys as panelists before 100 in-house corporate counsels. Jeffrey Haidet, Chairman of Long & Aldridge, and William Brewster, the managing partner of Kilpatrick Stockton, took their lumps and served with honor handling such questions as:

Why are outside firms slow to send invoices.....?
Why don’t outside lawyers understand the business models and corporate culture of their clients?

Regarding the question on invoices, I am always amazed that law firm’s don’t understand that their corporate clients are not happy about being billed for work done over two months ago. It isn’t even unusual for the bill to be three months behind the actual work by the time it gets to the corporate counsel. That causes problems with their records. People tend not to be very appreciative of work done two or three months in arrears. The average law firm has 78 days of work in process and it takes 60 days to collect once the bill has gone out the door or across the Internet. That is money that is not in the partners’ pockets and it is an irritant to the law firm’s client. So, why not solve the problem? It isn’t rocket science. The steps are clear and simple:

Require fee earners to track and report time extemporaneously as work is performed
Give them the tools to do so including the ability to do so anywhere, any time preferably using BlackBerries or other PDA devices
Use tools with spell check and automatic testing against the engagement standards (pricing and billing rules) required by the client
Require time entries to be correct as submitted by the fee earner or as edited, throughout the month, by the fee earner's secretary or assistant
Run bills immediately after month end
Require billing attorneys to return changes within three business days or the bills go out the door “as is”
Send bills electronically or by e-mail wherever you can
If clients will accept it, change your service (billing month) to cover the period from the 26th through the 25th. Doing so means you have a bill in the clients hands by the end of their month even though it is a few days out of sync with the calendar. Many clients will prefer it.

As for the second question—why outside lawyers don’t understand the business models and corporate culture of their clients - I will save my comments for a later post.