Tips to avoid slippage in time recording

Even after all of the changes that we have seen in the profession, recording five or five-and-a-half hours of chargeable work a day is still considered a sound target. In almost any other commercial arena, this would be greeted with amazement – managers would ask what has become of the missing unworked hours in the day.

I don’t think that lawyers are lazy (although some are underemployed). I believe that their short working days and consequent loss of revenue is largely the result of slippage. There is significant slippage between the number of hours spent at work by a lawyer and the number of hours recorded as chargeable.

More slippage can occur as those chargeable hours are billed if fee earners do not bill the actual number of hours recorded on the file. Then slippage goes on as the billed totals are not collected in cash and a percentage is lost in bad debts.

There seems to be two main factors at work in relation to slippage:

1. whether time is accurately recorded; and
2. how effectively that recorded time is billed.

Most people treat time recording as a chore. It takes time and real concentration, but it can become a habit. It is absolutely vital that, before leaving the office, the day’s time record is reviewed and adjusted.

It is inevitable that some time spent will have been missed. All fee earners should review and correct their records while their memories are still fresh. If they do this, fee earners will see how productive they are being and record time accurately, neither risking overcharging clients nor under recovering.

Conversion is the next element in the process. Unfortunately, it appears that, for many lawyers, there really needs to be a change of culture. I wonder whether some solicitors would prefer it if they did not need to charge at all. We enjoy the legal work, but feel embarrassed by having to charge for it.

So, we need to educate our people that this is a business. We must of course justify our fees and give sound value for money, but we cannot afford not to charge properly for the work that we do. We have to understand that what we are doing is valuable and charge accordingly.

There is now much talk about the death of time charging. But, even if hourly rates disappear in favour of value pricing, fixed fees and other methods, the firm’s management will still need fee earners to record time to understand what it is that their fee earners are doing and whether the firm is getting value for the fee earners’ time.

And at the end of the day, allowing slippage means that you are not treating yourself fairly or valuing the skills that you have.

What do you think? How can we get full value for our skills?