Legal Billing Software Can be Critical for a Successful Law Practice

Legal billing software facilitates billing of time and expenses incurred for clients by law firms. We look at the typical facilities offered by billing software and how it can be critical for a successful practice.

The software will provide an interface to enter a billable event (such as a court appearance), and the time you spend on it for each client. Some programs might also allow you to track the time you spend on each case automatically. This interface should be simple and intuitive, and easily reachable. Don’t buy programs that require a great deal of time to learn how to use it.

You will also be incurring recoverable expenses on behalf of the client (such as court filing fees), which can also be entered into the billing software.

Finally, you can enter the payments that you receive from the client.

You can then review the account of each client in detail, or get an overview of all accounts balances. You can also print an invoice with full details, along with your logo, using the legal billing software.

The above will be the core of any good legal billing software. Additional facilities might be available for financial management of past dues.

Monitoring Past Dues

Recovering the costs of your time, and also the out-of-pocket expenses you have incurred for each client, is the key to successful legal practice. The billing software helps you record the time, expenses and receipts, and prepare bills and statements of account. The task does not stop there.

You should be able to track which clients have not paid in time. This is an important financial management function. A facility to review all accounts with a balance outstanding, whether negative or positive, is a basic facility that should come with the legal billing software.

Additionally, a facility to keep track of bill due dates, and alert you to past due accounts, is also critical. Such a facility will save you the trouble to manually monitor outstanding balances. Some programs might even allow you to compute late payment charges and print out a reminder statement.

An age wise analysis of all past due accounts will highlight the bad paymaster clients, and allow you to take necessary action in time.

Not monitoring past dues in these ways can mean that some accounts are never paid.

Different Flavors of Legal Billing Software

There are legal billing software packages available for single users, in network versions and client server versions. Large law firms might even go for Web based packages that incorporate billing facilities. A Web based package allows authorized users to work with the system from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Legal billing software might also work with other popular software such as QuickBooks(R) and might come with a Microsoft Certification indicating that it will work with Microsoft platforms.

The more advanced systems will incorporate several facilities such as identifying the time not billed, or members of your firm who have not yet finalized billable time entries, and so on.

The choice of legal software will depend on the size of your firm, and the sophistication of your users.