In a recent post I addressed the idea that lawyers who run a law firm need to not only be a successful lawyer, but they also must be successful businessmen or women. If you have read that post you now understand the importance of tracking income by practice area.
Another way to gain valuable insight regarding the business of your firm is to account for all the time spent on each matter as you are actually putting the work in on that matter. Tracking the time you spend on a specific matter as you or other lawyers at your firm are carrying out the work ensures that you will accurately capture all of the hours spent on a matter. By doing this you are able to make sure that your firm is being compensated for all of your time.
Tracking Time Associated With Fixed Fee or Contingency Cases
It is entirely possible that your firm takes on cases or matters with fixed fees or contingency fees. This means that regardless of how much time you spend on a case or legal matter your firm not be compensated at the standard hourly rate you are accustomed to. In the instances where your firm is not successful with a contingency case you may not be compensated at all.
Some law firms may consider it unnecessary to track the time they spend on these cases because they are not compensated based on their time. It is however, still important that your firm is diligent in tracking the time spent on theses cases. By tracking the time spent on fixed fee and contingency cases your firm will be able to understand your rate of productivity and the ratio of work to income gained by your firm on different case types.
I understand tracking the time spent on different matters can be tedious and many times is even an afterthought for firms. Unfortunately to run a successful firm, you need to do it. Your firm’s time is valuable and it must be managed. You simply cannot manage what you don’t measure, and that is why tracking all of your firm’s time is supremely important. CosmoLex allows your firm to capture all the time time associated with your activity as it happens wherever it happens via the cloud.
Try CosmoLex today and start tracking all of your firm’s time to:
- gain valuable insight into your firm’s productivity
- ensure your firm is being compensated appropriately
- reap the benefits of understanding which case types have the greatest return on your time invested
