Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | T E C H S O L U T I O N S 38 effort for the finance team to take corrective action on the non-compliant time records. It often means phone calls and emails back and forth with the timekeeper who originally did the work. Firms should therefore deploy a time capture system that can work in tandem with their e-billing system to aid compliance. It should prompt timekeepers that a specific client has a rule around the time they are recording. A link to the client's full OCGs in the document management system can also be provided allowing the timekeeper to go straight to the guidelines if required. The ideal moment to introduce this prompt is clearly upstream from the billing stage. In fact it's at what we call the intersection of time: that is where the timekeeper's intellectual engagement with the client matter intersects with the act of time recording. It is the point at which they submit the time record. Note that the objective of time capture is always to make the process light and quick. If the entering and validation of time is too time-consuming in itself, timekeepers will be reluctant to enter smaller increments, meaning time leakage and lost revenue, thereby negating the point of compliance which is to keep realization rates high. Conversely if time entry and validation is very quick and simple, and built into the workflow using the tools to hand, including mobile time recording, then much smaller increments of time will be captured every day, which multiplied across every timekeeper can accumulate to a significant increase in revenue for the firm. Therefore, the entry validation process should be introduced in the right place in the workflow and has to be non- intrusive enough that it doesn't discourage lawyers from entering small increments of time. Remember, the important thing about validating time entries as they're submitted is that it cuts out the longwinded process of finance going back and forth with a fee-earner to clarify and make each line entry compliant. This is potentially billable time that you're taking away from a lawyer. Furthermore, it can be the case that the law firm's finance department decides that a non-compliant line item is not worth querying with a fee-earner, so it's written off before the invoice is even sent. While it's fine to make that call occasionally, it can become a bad habit, the cumulative effect of which could start to have a significant impact on firm revenue.

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