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Time Tracking
January 31, 2017
5 minutes

Importance of Time Tracking Software For Lawyers

Men standing with briefcase

Setting high goals for himself, John entered a prestigious law firm and became an associate. But this was just the beginning of a very long way, with the end goal of eventually becoming a partner, a dream many law graduates envision but only a few have the mettle to fulfill. However, John soon realized that the road to becoming a partner is not without twists and turns.

From Associate to Partner

Starting off as an associate can be quite mundane. While being hired on salary and pinned up with a mentor for the purpose of learning, a new associate probably wont have much work during the first few months of the new job.

This is because a partner starts assigning work to the new guy only after he has considerably proven his worth. But soon the work starts piling up and huge stacks of files on a young associate’s desk is quite a norm, but this bundle of work paves way for an associate to become a partner.

An associate’s productivity is measured by the billable hours. A firm typically expects an associate to bill 2200 hours a year. While this might not seem a lot for an entire year, but if you do the math, it comes down 8.5 hours a day!

Well, working 8-9 hours a day is pretty much standard but it certainly is hard to convert those work hours into billable hours. This means that a lawyer simply cannot afford to lose the track of time while being boggled by too much work.

How bad Time Tracking practices impede Productivity?

 

Man with glasses working

 

Billable hours are the easiest way to track the productivity of an employee.

But keeping the track record of billable hours is a tricky business because inflating the billing hours could land a lawyer in the midst of lawsuits and jail time, while underbilling could mean that the dream of printing ‘Partner’ on the visiting card will never come true.

A seasoned joke about a lawyer that when he dies and goes to the Pearly Gates, St. Peter says to him, “you must be some 45 years old” “Yes,” says the lawyer, “I just turned 45.” “But our records say that you are 94 years old.” “Oh,” replied the lawyer, “you must have been looking at my billing records.”

Such kind of anecdotes have been around for decades because lawyers are notorious for overbilling. While it could have been overlooked in the olden days, today having extremely transparent practices is very important. And so is extremely accurate billing practices!

How Time Tracking can boost Productivity?

There is only one way that can solve the many problems of the law field. And it is efficient Time Tracking.

Many lawyers fill up their Time Sheets at the end of the week, often making mistakes, by either forgetting to add up the time spent on replying to emails or by mistakingly exaggerating the time spent upon research for a particular case.

Similarly many lawyers use the old school method of keeping a diary to record all the time spent while working. As simple as it may sound, this method is prone to manual errors.

Some lawyers have switched to Spread Sheets like Excel, while the medium of record keeping has changed, the problems associated with Time Tracking essentially stay the same.

Time Tracking has been revolutionised in the age of Digital Technology. There are many Time Tracking Software For Lawyers that help is tracking time that is correct to the minute.

Many law firms and lawyers have started making use of the efficient technology to not only resolve the hassle of Time Tracking but also to produce correct billable hours. The lawyers are aided to a great extent and they do not need to pick up the pen or open up an excel sheet every time they email to the client about the progress of the case or read up a research paper regarding the matter of the case.

StaffTimerApp: Time Tracking Software For Lawyers

While there are many Time Tracking Software For Lawyers out there, there is nothing quite like StaffTimerApp.

This web and desktop Application works like a charm for lawyers. The lawyers can set up the Cases that they are working on and give access to their clients so that they can know exactly how the time is spent on every aspect of the case. This way the Clients can have a transparent idea of what they are being billed for.

The Application runs in the background without any interference and successively captures Screenshots of the activity of lawyers, the Screenshots are then translated into billable hours. This provides an absolutely foolproof way of tracking time correctly.

The application goes even further and gives the option of Screenshot categorisation. The system is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms and they automatically classify the Screen time that is spent while working on a Case and the Screen time spent wondering around on, perhaps, Facebook! With so many wonderful features that have the strength of easing the life of a lawyer, StaffTimerApp is a perfect fit!