how to keep track of time as a lawyer

^{How time tracking for attorneys work}

• Create account
• Set up projects. Create projects, categorize them by clients, and create tasks on projects. ...
• Track time. Track time you spend on activities with a single click using a timer. If you forget to start timer, you can always enter the time manually later.
• Install desktop app. You can track time in the browser, or via desktop and mobile app (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux).
• Set hourly rates. Set hourly rate for each employee and project. ...
• Export reports. You can run an online report and break down time tracking data however you need. ...
• Get more features. All the core features are free and everything is unlimited. ...

Do you track time as a lawyer?

As a lawyer, time tracking can be a complicated and often pain-inducing topic. But for any law firm that charges by the hour, time is literally money—so it’s vital to find a method of tracking time that works for you and your firm.

Why automate lawyer time tracking with legal technology?

By automating and simplifying lawyer time tracking with legal technology, firms can save time, improve tracking and billing accuracy, and increase productivity by revealing day-to-day inefficiencies in their processes.

Should lawyers Bill by the hour or month?

Even if you’re not billing by the hour (i.e., charging flat fees or on a contingency basis), knowing where your time is going is, bottom-line, the best means to ensure the profitability of your work. It takes time to track time. So many lawyers opt to leave it to the end of the day, week, or even month (or even longer) to log their billable time.

What does time tracking mean to you?

This means making things like time tracking more visible and more convenient within your daily routines. For example, when working with a system like Clio Manage, there is a myriad of options to track your time in the way that’s easiest and most convenient for you.

How do lawyers keep track of their hours?

1) The legal software stopwatch The stopwatch is a tried and true means to track time. Most modern legal software systems provide this time-tracking feature. For example, if a lawyer opens a case file, there's usually a digital stopwatch they can click to begin tracking the time spent on a task.

What software do lawyers use to track time?

Two popular options are Timetracker and Timewerks. Using these tools, you're able to track and enter time from any computer or mobile device, ensuring that you capture all of your billable time. But in most cases the time entered isn't automatically associated with your law firm's billing system.

How do lawyers and legal assistants keep track of their time?

A more direct method to record time is having individual timekeepers (e.g., lawyers, paralegals or limited license legal technicians) electronically input their time straight into billing systems. This avoids the duplication of writing out the details on paper and then transferring notes into the billing system later.

How many hours do most lawyers work?

Most lawyers work more than 40 hours a week. It's not uncommon for lawyers (especially Big Law attorneys) to work up to 80 hours each week. On average, according to the 2018 Legal Trends Report, full-time lawyers work 49.6 hours each week.

Is time tracking legal?

Is employee time tracking required by any law? Yes, employee time tracking is a part of record-keeping requirements under FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) and many states' laws.

How much does Clockify cost?

Clockify FAQs Clockify has 4 different plans: Basic at $3.99 per user per month. Standard at $5.49 per user per month. Pro at $7.99 per user per month.

How do you capture billable time?

5 Easy Tips to Capture & Bill more timeIdentify unbilled time, fees, and expenses. Before you can implement strategies to capture more time and billable hours, you need to identify how and where this time gets lost. ... Establish best practices. ... Accurate time tracking. ... Automate the billing process. ... Make it mobile.

How do you bill time in a law firm?

Unless someone told you otherwise, bill all the time you spend on a task, even if you know some of it will be marked down. At most firms, you will still get credit toward your billable hour goal for all the time you enter into the firm's billing software, even if not all of that time is billed to the client.

Why is time recording important for lawyers?

US lawyers have always understood the primary reason for recording time is to understand the cost of the work being undertaken and that it is therefore necessary to record everything. Whether this time can be billed is a separate issue and must only be considered at the point of billing.

Do lawyers have time for hobbies?

In biglaw it depends on your firm, your practice, and your current workload but yeah, you can still have hobbies provided they don't include firm weekday commitments or long-term weekend commitments. Work ebbs and flows.

Is being a lawyer stressful?

The Stress Deadlines, billing pressures, client demands, long hours, changing laws, and other demands all combine to make the practice of law one of the most stressful jobs out there. Throw in rising business pressures, evolving legal technologies, and climbing law school debt and it's no wonder lawyers are stressed.

Do lawyers have a life?

A day in the life of a lawyer is anything but a nine-to-five routine with an hour or more for a leisurely lunch. Bloomberg View reported that an attorney at a large law firm works anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week on average. The long hours are the result of the obligations the practice of law imposes on an attorney.

What is timekeeping in law?

Whatever branch of law the legal professional is engaged in, timekeeping is an integral part of the typical work routine. Overall, legal practice incorporates not only activities that are directly related to serving the clients but conducting meetings, making phone calls, sending and replying emails, to name a few.

What is the best software for legal time tracking?

That is the reason for legal professionals to opt for automatic record their billable time with reliable time trackers. Start/stop button software is the best option due to simplicity of use and security of data. With that said, TMetric comes as one of top recommendations for legal time tracking.

Why use a time tracker?

Since the hourly billing is the most common billing method used by lawyers and attorneys, applying a time tracker allows to break down the hourly rate into specific billable slots, which accounts for the unquestionable precision of the work time calculations . Any loss in time account can dramatically decrease attorney's bill.

Why do lawyers use Excel?

It is quicker in comparison to the previous technique but still lacks the flexibility of digital solutions. Nowadays, lawyers apply time trackers as the most advanced timekeeping technique.

Why is working with documents important?

Working with documents is a daily ongoing process in any legal professional's routine, which means that timekeeping is possible to link to the time of creating/editing/modifying certain files. Sorting documents by folders can be also handy for tracking the dates and creating the unbroken workflow.

What is the foundation of lawyer's fee arrangement?

The amount charged by a lawyer for every hour of work when catering the service for their clients is the foundation of lawyer's fee arrangement. Despite the diversity of legal jobs, it looks that fee arrangement based on the hourly rate does not show any sign of disappearing.

Is TMetric app 100% mobile?

TMetric application will also enable you to save time and effort on recurring projects and law-related projects supposing the lengthy duration. In addition to all the TMetric downloading options, it should be mentioned that TMetric app is 100% mobile.

Billable Vs. Non-Billable Hours

In the legal arena, this becomes a key concern for every professional. The reason behind this being that each law firm has its own way of measuring attorney billable hours alongside its own rules as to what is counted as billable.

Why Is Time Tracking Hard For Lawyers?

Recording the time you spend on completing every activity, both billable and non-billable, is of utmost importance as it affects your income as well as performance.

How To Track Billable Time?

For your easy perusal, here are the different methodologies the lawyers follow to record and calculate the time spent on each project.

Top 7 Tools To Track Attorney Billable Hours

Now that we have gone through what constitutes attorney billable hours and the various approaches to measuring it, let’s look at a list of the top seven tools that can help you accurately track your chargeable time.

Wrapping Up

Accurate time tracking is a priority for both personal and professional reasons.

1. Create Billable & Non-Billable Tasks

In actiTIME, you can define billable and non-billable tasks in the Types of Work interface. For billable tasks, you can define hourly rates, run reports, generate bills and invoices.

2. Customize Work Structure

actiTIME offers a three-level hierarchy that you can customize for your own needs. The default level structure goes as “Customer / Project / Task,” but you can adjust it according to your needs.

3. Create Custom Fields for Tasks

Many of the law firms among our clients require Litigation Codes ( UTBMS codes) and Practice Areas fields to review case profitability by areas or communicate codes for invoicing. actiTIME allows you to add these or any other codes and indicators to tasks using custom data fields.

4. Run Analytics & Reports

With types of work and work structure defined, you can use the logged time to build charts and run reports. Our clients from the law practice industry prefer Billing Summary and Cost of Work reports.

5. Track Time From Anywhere

Some lawyers and attorneys charge by the hour, while some bill in increments of an hour. In any case, every billable second matters for law firms and legal professionals personally. actiTIME allows to track time in three ways: using timesheet browser software, Chrome timer extension and mobile apps. Let’s see how law firms can use them effectively.

6. Feel Certain That Your Data is Secure

If you use actiTIME Online (learn if you need to switch to actiTIME Self-Hosted ), your data is stored in our data center that uses an encrypted connection, firewall security and corresponding security certificates. We also back up the data daily and store recent database copies in case you need to restore your data.

Law Firm Time Tracking with actiTIME

Legal professionals tend to log their time the next day or at the end of the week, while every missing billable minute leads to thousands of dollars losses for law firms.

Paper

There is nothing wrong with paper. In fact, paper has a lot of advantages when it comes to tracking time. Just keep a cheap notebook or a stack of index cards with you at all times, and write down what you were doing and how much time you spend doing it.

Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets are pretty ideal for timekeeping, and with Google Docs, iWork, and Office cloud apps, they are quite portable. In fact, with Google Docs, you can even have multiple people billing time on the same spreadsheet at the same time.

Passive Tracking Software

Timekeeping is tedious. There are ways to take shortcuts and bill more accurately, though. Chrometa, for example, tracks what you are doing on your computer, tablet, and phone (you can also add time manually) and assemble timesheets or export your time to FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Clio, and Xero.

Timekeeping Software

There are plenty of software packages that include a timekeeping component. I have mostly used Freshbooks, but all practice management software has timekeeping functions, and so do many accounting packages. The nice thing about using timekeeping software is that your invoices are basically assembled as you go.

First, Figure Out Your (Daily and Weekly) Goals

This is huge. A common mistake many young lawyers make is to simply do the work as they receive it, bill it, and hope they make it to their annual goal of 1,900 or 2,000 hours (or whatever it may be).

Create a Timekeeping System That Works for You

While law firms usually have timekeeping systems, it’s important to create a system that works for you. And while there is flexibility and your system may change over time, the reality is that habits form quickly. It’s important to be intentional about how you want to do this from the very beginning.

But Do Cut Yourself Some Slack

This is more of a reminder than a tip, but: Cut yourself some slack. It’s called the practice of law for a reason. Timekeeping and billing are a strange part of law practice and, in many ways, the bane of our existence.

YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY MENTORS

60-Minute Mentoring for Lawyers and Law Students: Small Commitments, Quick Rewards. In this easy-to-use guide, Amy Timmer and Matt Cristiano explain why having more than one mentor is essential for new lawyers — and they set you up to make the most of mentor relationships.

What is Hubstaff time tracking software?

Time tracking software that automates work time recording removes pointless admin routine and enables instant access to accurate time records. With Hubstaff, lawyers focus on cases at hand as Hubstaff time tracker eliminates a danger of losing detail. Lawyers can easily navigate between clients and cases without feeling distracted.

What is harvest time tracking?

This perfectly designed time tracking software allows you to track time from the desktop, phone, or in browser with a click. Like TMetric, Harvest proudly displays the impressive list of integrations to record time directly from lawyers' preferred tools.

What is TIQ tracking?

For law firms that rely on billable hours for maintaining the generation of their income, it is vital that tracking is automated, performed in real time and supported with case management functionality.

Why is developer important for lawyers?

What makes it a good choice: Developers showed a great attention to addressing details (clients, cases, tasks, codes) that facilitate processing time tracking data within the billing process and reduce time consumption.

Can lawyers track time?

Lawyers can track time from across any device, including on-the-go options. It has multi-timers, which is a game changer for law firms employees that have to juggle lots of legal tasks. For reaching absolute accountability, choose among various options (time cards, weekly timesheets).