Blog: Time Entries that Cost You Money

As most legal professionals know, doing work and billing time is only half the battle.  When clients refuse to pay their bills, it doesn't matter matter how much time you logged, you are not getting paid.

Big firms know that a good time entry means the difference between getting paid, having to offer a discount, or getting completely stiffed.  They want clients to pay their full bill, every time, in a timely manner, and to be happy when they do.  This is why they invest the time to develop and enforce a style guide.

A style guide is a set of rules that standardize the policies regarding how firm members create time entries.  It covers topics such as what words, punctuation, tense, and formatting standards to use.

An effective style guide is easy to understand and helps firm members create time entries that are professional, keep clients happy, and make them want to pay their bills.

Some attorneys think that client non-payment is unavoidable, but what most attorneys do not realize is that clients are more likely to pay bills that are concise, easy to read, and clearly illustrate what work was done.

If a client understands how you are delivering value and the extent of the work you are doing, they are far more likely to appreciate the work you do and pay their bills on time.

While drafting this article, we reached out to leading law firms across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to learn how they coach their staff to create time entries.  We compiled the most common and most useful tips for your review.

While the list below is not exhaustive, every firm should develop their own style guide that sets the tone for how they want their firm communicating.

Just because you had a phone call does not mean you got something done.  Clients are more likely to want to pay for activities that clearly communicate that progress was made.

Every billing entry should provide details on what was done and specifically state what was worked on.  The more time that was spent on an activity, the more details that should be provided.

– Dale Carnegie.

Clients do not want to be referred to as "client" on their bills.  It makes them feel that you view them as anonymous.  Similarly, if you do not include a last name or an identifier as described in the next tips, your client might be left wondering "Who is Theresa?"

This should be self-explanatory.  No one wants to see their name spelled incorrectly.  If you were careless enough to misspell a client's name on a bill, then what else were you careless about?

Your client likely does not know every single person who is related to their matter.  You want to leave your client with as few questions as possible and including an identifier on potentially unknown names will go a long way in keeping questions to a minimum.

When in a telephone conference or meeting, identify all individual parties unless the parties can be referred to collectively such as "Board of Directors" as listed above.

Your client wants to know that you see them as a person and referring to them by name will go a long way in showing them that you care.  Specificity is also important, so be sure to use names with identifiers instead of just "Adjuster" or "Opposing Counsel".

Past tense verbs tell a story and make bills easier to read.  The "wrongs" above look more like tasks to be completed, while the "rights" look like completed tasks .

Leaving a sentence without a period looks unprofessional.  Longer descriptions with multiple sentences should always have periods, so shorter descriptions should also include periods for consistency.

You went to law school but your client likely did not.  Use words and phrases that your client will understand.

While abbreviations may be okay on Facebook or for interoffice communications, you should never abbreviate a billing entry.  If you expect your client to pay you $200 for a phone call, you can take the extra few seconds to type out the full words.

Contractions look unprofessional and are unacceptable in business writing.  You want your client to view you professionally so avoid using contractions.

This tip is intended to help you provide clarity to your clients.  Capitalization will let your clients know what is important and draw attention to the substance of each entry.

While you might work with 990's every day, your client does not.  Avoid ambiguity in situations like this by typing the full name of the form or forms you worked on.

If your firm is struggling with bills being paid then it is likely that there is actually a more fundamental problem with how your billing entries are shown to clients.  Here are some tips for consistent timekeeping throughout your whole firm.

The first step towards effective activity descriptions is to develop a "style guide" to document how each member of your team should be creating their entries.  This can be similar to the "Do:" and "Do Not:" sections above, but should also be tailored specifically to your firm and practice area.

Once your style guide is created, another hurdle you'll encounter is how to keep your whole firm compliant.  Providing resources like Faster Snippets for your team members to use to make this process easier will be invaluable in making sure that everyone is using consistent language even if they don't remember everything in your style guide.

It's much easier for someone to type an abbreviation that automatically fills out the desired verbiage than for them to remember every little rule.