Several clients recently asked me what would be involved in having their lawyers enter their time directly into the computer rather than write it on time sheets. For years, it has baffled me why so many lawyers resist one of the best ways to recoup some of their investment in computers and software.

Many lawyers cling to old-fashioned methods of recording time. They devise written sheets, awkward codes and memorize or sit with a long list of client and matter codes to prepare individual time entries. If they are diligent, they regularly hand their time records to a billing clerk or secretary who retypes them into the firm’s timekeeping and billing program. If lawyers are busy, they’re apt to forget the 10- or 15-minute phone calls with clients or adversaries during the course of the day. If they’re out of the office, they’re more likely to forget about the telephone calls they returned.

If you’re looking for an incentive to improve your firm’s time recording, consider this: If a lawyer billing at $200 per hour omits 12 minutes of billable time each day, it translates to $200 per week. Even if attorneys take a lot of vacation time, the 12 lost minutes daily can add up to about $9,000 a year per lawyer. While 12 minutes per day doesn’t sound like a big deal, the annual loss of income to a four- or five-lawyer firm can be dramatic.

I’m still surprised when I meet with lawyers who don’t even write down their own time. These lawyers insist someone on their staff comb through the file and determine what the firm has done on behalf of the client and devise a bill from the raw output. Unless the lawyer has taken notes of every telephone conversation and marked the starting and ending times, much billable time will be lost.

There are many improvements law firms can make to streamline their time keeping and billing procedures that not only will capture lost time, but will improve the firm’s bottom line.

The most obvious one, if you’re not already doing so, is to transition your lawyers from paper-based records to computer-based time entries. Many of the popular timekeeping and billing programs were designed for lawyers to enter their own time as they work. Most of them include a timer option so an attorney can start a time entry, turn on the timer and record the time slip as the work is performed.

Often, when making this kind of transition, you may have to rethink some of the structural decisions you made when first setting up your billing program. For instance, the initial task or activity codes may have been derived from a partner’s previous law firm. Over the years, new codes may have been added in random locations in the task list as the need arose. The original logic or grouping of codes may have to be reviewed to simplify data entry and make lawyers want to use the computer-based system.

When considering converting lawyers from paper-based time tracking systems to computer entry, it is important to look at the new system with "busy attorney eyes." Remember, most lawyers who are still writing down their time don’t see that method as broken. They may argue their system is portable, flexible, doesn’t rely on electricity (especially with the prospect looming of blackouts in many parts of the country this summer), and, because it is entered by a second person, subject to editing and review. If they did see it as broken, they would have taken the initiative years ago to use the firm’s billing program.

Consider ways to streamline the data entry process. For example, if your billing program supports shortcut abbreviations, make sure the abbreviation list is reasonable, logical and easy to access during time entry. Similarly, if you use client and matter numbers, and your billing program allows you to cross-reference the number with a name, think about entering the plaintiff or defendant name in the second nickname field so attorneys can verify they are associating their time with the correct client and matter.

If your program has the option for a timer — which most of the leading programs do — you may want to show the lawyers how to use it so they can time the work as they do it. The satisfaction of seeing their billable hours multiplied by their rate with a resulting value on the screen is often incentive enough for some lawyers to start using the firm’s billing program to track their billable hours.

For lawyers doing large chunks of work for individual clients, some of the programs allow you to enter starting and ending times, and the program does the calculation. Lawyers also may want to review their work to see how much time they billed on a daily or weekly basis, either on the screen or in a report. Another issue your firm may confront when migrating from paper to PC is whether to require attorneys to enter both billable and non-billable time. Many lawyers, especially those who have many flat-fee or contingent-fee matters, have gotten into the habit of only recording time for their hourly matters. Similarly, even lawyers who primarily do hourly billing, often choose to track only the billable work. They don’t enter slips for reviewing bills or other administrative tasks. The benefit of tracking all your time is you can better analyze whether you and your associates are using time efficiently. You also gain a better understanding of how and on what tasks you’re spending your time.

When lawyers begin to enter their time directly into the computer as they work, there is no backup as with paper records. The easy solution is to regularly back up your firm’s billing database and, if you want extra insurance, consider setting up a daily time report that will list the attorney, date, client ID, description of work, amount of time spent and optionally, the billing rate, if the firm has several rates. This report also can be used for another purpose. Most of the billing programs suggest printing a full-detail worksheet or pre-bill before printing actual bills. These pre-bills are sorted by client rather than by timekeeper.

For firms where several attorneys may work on one case, encouraging (or even forcing) the lawyers to review their time prior to the end of the month will make the job of the responsible attorney easier. Using a report similar to the daily time report, each lawyer can edit their work by viewing their own entries in date order. If each lawyer has reviewed his own time, the attorney responsible for submitting the bill to the client will know the underlying time entries have been checked for accuracy. This will make the responsible lawyer’s job easier when it comes time to review the billing worksheets, pre-bills or whatever term your firm’s billing program uses to describe the draft version of the bills.

If your firm uses a case management program, you may have another tool that could be used to capture lawyers’ time directly into the computer. One of the advantages of staying with the leading software programs in their respective categories is that they generally link with the leading legal software products in other categories. For example, if you use Timeslips or PCLaw for billing, you can link them with Time Matters or Amicus Attorney. There also is a link between Tabs Timekeeping and Billing and Case Master, both from Software Technology in Lincoln, Neb. Once you set up the link between your case management and billing programs, you immediately will recognize efficiencies.

Both programs allow you to establish bi-directional or two-way links. I have found, however, it better to use the case management program as the main data source and set the link from there to the billing program. This way, when you change a client’s address in the case management program, the address will automatically be updated in the billing program. You also can use the information already in your case management program to set up records in your billing program.

Typically, before engaging a firm, a client will have dealings with it as a potential client. The potential client can be classified as a prospect in the case management program, enter the mailing information and possibly take notes or send a retainer or engagement letter. When the prospect calls to make an appointment or retain the firm, a physical file can be established, adding the new client case to the case management program.

If the programs were not linked, you also would need to open the billing program and duplicate the information to record time and prepare bills. When the billing and case management programs are linked, you merely add a client and/or client-matter code to a specific field on the case screen, save the record and confirm a new case record has been added to the billing program. The real benefit of this part of the link is when a client’s address changes. The links allow you to automatically update the billing program by changing the information once in the case management program.

Whether you link the case management program to the billing program, case management programs are another mechanism available to assist lawyers in better capturing billable time. While the set-up and implementation is different in each case management program, they all can be used to make time entries that can be sent directly into the firm’s billing program. For example, you can create a slip from an event record or time a telephone call. This provides another option and one less excuse for not using the computer to record time.

The only remaining excuse I usually hear from lawyers who haven’t seen the wisdom in entering time on the computer is, "I’m mostly out of the office so entering time on a computer isn’t practical." All the billing companies offer a Palm Pilot data-entry option for this application. For instance, using Time Reporter for Timeslips from Iambic Software, a busy lawyer can record her billable work while waiting for a case to be heard. While returning a call to a client on her cell phone, she can use the built-in timer to track the amount of time on the client’s call. When she returns to the office, she places her Palm Pilot or Handspring Visor into its cradle, presses the Sync button on the cradle and her time entries are transferred into the firm’s billing database, and any new client or case nicknames are copied to her Palm.

Prior to using a Palm Pilot for time entries when I’m out of the office, I had considered the Palm a gadget I didn’t really need. My thinking changed the day I participated in two panels at the annual New Jersey State Bar Association meeting and had to take care of two client emergencies between sessions. In the chaos of the day, had I remembered to jot down the calls at all, I would have significantly underestimated the amount of time I had spent assisting my clients. With my new Palm in tow, I timed the calls and was able to bill my clients for the actual amount of time and didn’t run the risk that on that hectic day I would forget to record those entries altogether. Those two calls paid for the cost of the Palm Pilot.

Almost as bad as not charging clients is the prospect of not getting paid for the work you actually record and bill. In my December column, I discussed many ideas for streamlining the preparation of bills. They included eliminating cover letters and using window envelopes. Make sure the bill format is acceptable to your clients and your descriptions of work performed are clear and detailed.