finance

How to Capture More Time with Better Timekeeping Habits

By Dan Pinnington

Part of better time management is capturing all of the time you actually work. Are poor timekeeping habits letting time and money slip through your fingers? Many of you will painfully recall handwriting your time sheets (and unfortunately, some of you will still be using paper time sheets—I won’t mention any names). Your staff person will have (or still has) equally painful memories of the mindless task of entering this information into your accounting system.

Paper time sheets are bad news. They are not very efficient because they require that the same information be transcribed at least twice. They also provide for lots of opportunity for errors, and even for missing information altogether. Throw out your paper time sheets and go electronic.

Electronic Time Sheets Are A Must
Today, there are many excellent time/billing and accounting software products that make it dead-easy for you to record your time directly on your own computer. Most of the practice-management software packages have similar functionality.

When you enter your own time, you eliminate the double entry by your staff person and, more important, the opportunity for transcription errors. Once entered on a computer, the entries can go directly into accounting programs, correspondence, or file. Road warriors can create electronic time records on a laptop or smartphone. The efficiency, extra speed, and improved accuracy of electronic time records makes them a no-brainer.

Now that we have you in the world of electronic time records, and even if you were already there, here are some other pointers for capturing more of your precious time.

Record Time Throughout the Day
You get to the end of a crazy day. You've been responding to and sending emails, talking with clients on the phone, and drafting numerous letters and documents. Time to pat yourself on the back and check your total time for the day. You add it up—only 4.3 hours. Huh??? You ask yourself: “Where did all of my time go? I got here early, worked through lunch, and stayed late, but I have only 4.3 hours recorded."

You move to disaster-recovery mode. Time to try to recreate the day. What did I work on? What telephone calls did I make? How long were they? How much time did I spend drafting the agreement on the Smith file? How many times was I interrupted while working on that agreement? You review your Sent folder to attempt to figure out what emails you read and sent that day. Stop! Trying to create entries for work done earlier in the day (much less in the more distant past) is very time-consuming and not likely to be very accurate or complete.

It is universally recognized that lawyers who create time records contemporaneously with completing the task capture a significantly greater portion of the work they have done; studies suggest a gain of 10-20 percent. Record your work as you go.

Most time and billing programs have a timer feature to help track how much time you have spent on any given task. It works just like a stopwatch. Most lawyers grossly underestimate the time they spend on individual tasks. Try timing your own tasks—you may be shocked by how much time you are missing.

If interrupted, pause or close the entry and create a new one for the new task. Reopen the original entry when you return to the original task.

At the end of the day, you should still review your timesheets. Look for missed time, and make any necessary corrections or additions while things are still fresh in your mind.

Record Time In Detail
Many time and billing programs have standard billing descriptions, for example, “conference with client,” or “review of correspondence.” While these standard descriptions are convenient, they don’t include nearly enough detail. Having detailed time entries is critical as a record of the work you did on a file and for communicating to the client what was done.

A detailed time entry looks something like this: “telephone conference with client re details of weekend access problems.” Or, “drafting of correspondence to client confirming instructions to skip zoning search.”

It will take you mere seconds to add a bit of extra detail to your time entries. The return on your investment will be massive. Detailed time records will help you refresh your mind as to the work that was done on a matter, even if it was in the distant past. You will also find that they give clients much less opportunity to complain about their accounts. In the event you have to sue a client for fees or become embroiled in a fee dispute, the effort spent will be repaid in spades.

Record Every Minute You Spend on a File
Don’t pre-judge and write off time spent on a file as unnecessary by not recording it on the day it was done. Record everything and wait until you final or interim bill the file, at which time you can properly judge all the factors that determine what should (and should not) be billed on the matter.

Record All Administrative and Other Non-Billable Time

Unfortunately, not all of your time is billable. There are loads of non-billable tasks that you must spend time on: marketing, administration, CLE and so on. To assess your performance and understand where your time is going, it is essential that you understand which non-billable tasks you are performing and how much time you spend on each. You can’t do this without a complete record your time—record everything.

Slice and Dice Your Numbers

Dan Pinnington is Law Practice Magazine's Editor-in-Chief and Director of practicePRO at the Lawyers' Professional Indemnity Company. Follow his tweets at @DanPinnington.