Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA 30 CASE STUDIES HPTY represents some of America's largest corporations, small local businesses and individual clients in high-risk litigation and business disputes. We were looking to streamline the billing process in order to reduce the rejection rate of client bills. Interested in driving timekeeping compliance, the firm launched a pilot of a mobile time entry solution. MOBILE BECOMES A MUST-HAVE At HPTY, 65 percent of the bills are sent electronically. Therefore, any inconsistency between the firm's electronic bills and client billing guidelines are likely to lead to rejections, thus taxing firm resources, delaying payments and compromising client trust. Like most firms, HPTY has a written timekeeping policy in place, but timekeeping expectations are an evolution, and it has been difficult to create timekeeping policies that work or to enforce policies. If the timekeeping policy doesn't motivate attorneys to enter their time, what will? HPTY set out to change timekeeping behavior at the firm. While most of the firm's attorneys are responsible for entering their own time, equity partners were permitted to have an administrative assistant help with timekeeping. Therefore, a behavioral shift would be required for attorneys of varied seniority levels in order to drive mobile time entry adoption for those who were accustomed to using spreadsheets, documents or even legal pads to keep track of their time. The project team quickly realized that mobile time entry had increased in importance from a "nice to have" to a "must have." A successful outcome was crucial, as it would set the stage for future timekeeping success. A TOP-DOWN APPROACH After identifying the firm's goals and reviewing the implementation plan, we carefully selected the initial group to begin the pilot. We made certain to include attorneys who were likely to be vocal about their mobile timekeeping experience — good or bad. We also chose participants that would be likely to influence others within the firm to adopt the mobile time entry solution. This approach reflected the internal sales pitch needed for attorneys to adopt the technology, far in advance of the firmwide rollout. While attorneys were testing the mobile time entry solution, the buzz within the firm increased. Suddenly, attorneys throughout the firm were requesting access to the mobile time entry solution at all levels of seniority, including equity partners! Several significant findings emerged from collecting and analyzing data from the initial results: • 99 percent of time entered was done on a mobile device or tablet, rather than through the firm's time and billing system. • 100 percent of the attorneys included in the initial rollout group were active participants. • The firm reduced time leakage by 26 percent, accounting for time that Seeing Success with a Mobile Timekeeping Rollout About the Author Tim Arvidson is the Director of Accounting and Billing at Hawkins Parnell Thackston & Young. He is a member of the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) Oversight Committee. Contact him at tarvidson@hptylaw.com. Frequent rejections due to a complex billing process are a common struggle for the nation's top law firms. Hawkins Parnell Thackston & Young (HPTY) was no exception.

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