Whether you’re founding a new law firm or expanding a current one, at some point or another, you may need to charge a contingency fee. State regulations govern certain aspects of contingency fees. However, there’s still a fair amount of fine-tuning involved in figuring out how much your firm should charge based on your geographic location, practice area, and other … Read More
Underbilling Legal Clients: How It Happens, Why It’s Bad, and How to Stop
For many lawyers, keeping track of time spent on clients is a major pain. Accurately tracking your hours takes time, even if it’s just a few extra minutes a day—not to mention that you might balk at the thought of using time-tracking software and prefer to estimate hours off the top of your head. However, when you do this, you’re … Read More
What to Do When Your Law Firm’s Client Won’t Pay
Following up on collections with clients is unpleasant and stressful for all involved. When things come to this point, there are often a series of individual decisions to be made about how to deal with a particular client and situation. But even if you choose to pursue payment, you likely won’t receive all, or even a substantial percentage, of what … Read More
How (and Why) to Avoid Write-Offs in Your Law Office
How much of your work are you writing off? The average law office writes off about 14% of their bills annually, with discounts increasing each year. If your office gives an average amount of write-offs, and you calculate your bills for a 30% profit margin, then those write-offs eliminate almost half your profits. Ouch! Why write-offs happen To reign in … Read More
How and When to Raise Your Law Firm’s Rates
Many law firms fear raising their prices because they worry they’ll lose business. While that can happen, undercharging will cost you far more in the long term than losing a few clients. Raising your rates can be done. In fact, it has to be done—to keep up with inflation, retain talent, expand your team, and invest in technology. But it … Read More
For the Lawyer’s Vision-Board: Zero AR
For many law firms, having a stack of overdue invoices is the norm. Studies agree that most firms leave a significant portion of your accounts receivable (or the money owed for work) on the table. Why do law firms have such a high percentage of accounts receivable (AR)? And what can they do to improve collections? Below, we break down … Read More
All-in-one Platform: Integrating Your Invoicing, Payments & Accounting
Running a law firm is no easy task; with many competing priorities needing attention, it becomes critical to maintain the utmost efficiency. That’s why it’s important to find integrated payment solutions that work within your primary business management platform and help you automate critical business functions such as accounting, invoicing, and payments. Not only are integrated solutions important from a … Read More
Make More Money with Your Legal Tech: How CosmoLex Can Improve Your Legal Billing
Your billing and accounting software shouldn’t feel like just another item to budget for. Instead, it should be a tool to help you actively make more money—through better billing processes and time saved. Below, we break down steps for law firms seeking to improve their billing processes. Improve timekeeping If you don’t track billable time, you don’t get paid for … Read More
5 Proven Billing Tactics to Get Paid Faster
Getting paid is an essential part of any business. But for law firms, the billing process can get particularly unwieldy—until it’s eating into your capacity to get paid. Many firms know that their billing process absorbs valuable, billable hours. But because it still needs to get done, they can fall into the habit of treating it as a necessary evil—the … Read More
5 Key Benefits of Streamlining Your Legal Billing & Accounting
Every lawyer wants to put as much work time as possible toward billable hours, yet determining how best to do that presents a challenge. Which non-billable tasks can be streamlined or eliminated? Popular accounting tools like QuickBooks®️ can seem like they’re saving time, but because such software is generic—and not legal-specific—it can create challenges and tangles in a firm’s workflow. … Read More