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Being a lawyer is challenging enough. For some clients, the lawyer’s work can literally change their lives, for better or worse. To have such responsibility is not easy for anyone, but legal professionals have passion for what they do which is why they have chosen this job.
However, there are some tasks that are not related to their legal responsibilities but can also create a lot of unnecessary stress. In this article, we will discuss the unanticipated challenges of legal professionals and solutions.
How to Gain Extra time?
Probably all law students were prepared for the alleviated stress levels at their future job, as it involves sensitive cases of their clients. What they were not prepared for is the amount of additional work and spending time on non-core activities.
Given the average hourly rate of lawyers is $300, the opportunity cost of spending time on non-billable tasks is incredibly high.
Figuring out the right billing can be a challenge in itself. It is essential to record all time spent directly working on the client’s case, a detailed description, but also suit the client’s billing policies.
But even when the invoice was perfectly prepared and sent to a client, the client might take their time to pay it. According to research law firms in the UK alone had £5.6 Bn of outstanding invoices. What should legal professionals do about them? Chasing clients is time-consuming, and sometimes uncomfortable, given the trustful relationship law firms manage to build with their clients.
The good news is that legal technology is developing very fast to help lawyers address these kinds of problems. Now, lawyers can automate invoicing and chasing and other accounts receivable management tasks so they can focus on more important responsibilities. Kolleno all-in-one finance platform is compatible with Clio, the legal case management tool, and will use AI technology to help to communicate to your clients in the most appropriate tone-of-voice, but also will suggest a tailored collection strategy with an actionable daily to-do list.
Work Smarter, Not Longer
Law firms’ “utilisation rate”, measured by Clio as billable hours divided by workday hours, has increased by 5% in the past 6 years.
In the past year, the utilisation rate increased the most: by 2%, equivalent to 40 hours of billable hours a year. 33% represent billable hours given the 8-hour work day (equals 2.6 hours a day of billable work.)
However, if the lawyer is working more than 8 hours a week, the 2.6 hours would result in a smaller percentage of the billable work. Therefore, a rising utilisation rate does not necessarily mean that the law, firms are becoming more productive but work more hours resulting in a poorer work/life balance.
The rising number of clients or cases means lawyers also have a growing pile of non-core tasks. The good news is that there are digital tools that help law firms to automate manual tasks. By using the Kolleno AR management solutions our clients save 16 hours monthly by automating some repetitive tasks.
Stop Losing Money
The realization rate, measured by, is the number of hours that make it to the final bill after working on a client’s case. The collection rate, on the other hand, is the actual amount paid by clients.
According to Clio’s “Legal Trends Report”, there are still more than 10% unbilled and 16% uncollected in legal fees. That means that the non-core activities still take up a lot of time in the legal industry, but also accounts receivable management can be improved. Not collecting more than 10% means your law firm’s cash flow is bleeding. While liquidity might not be the biggest issue, think about the hours you have put into that client’s case.
There are solutions for how law firms improve the collection. The secret lies in timely invoicing, reminders, appropriate tone of voice and many more. Understandably, legal professionals do not want to spend time on that activities, so trying the existing solutions for that issue is worthwhile!
Go With the Cloud
Law firms that use cloud technology are seeing better results in almost every area of their legal practice when compared to their peers who do not use cloud technology.
For example, the relationship with their clients is described as good by 88% of cloud technology adopters’ vs. 55% of law firms that do not use cloud solutions. Benefits continue to areas like salary, or even mental health.
If you are still wondering how to improve the adoption of digital technology in your legal practice, you have a great opportunity to learn how in our free webinar “The benefits of using digital tools in the legal industry stretch far beyond increased efficiency.”
On the 6th of December 2022, at 3 PM GMT Kolleno’s Legal Industry Accounts Receivable specialist Uri Debson together with Founder & Managing Director at KC Partners Robert Hanna will discuss the importance of digital transformation in the legal industry.
