Leak 2 – Under time-recording

Law firms:  Making more money is easy when you stop the leaks. 

In this continuing series I am sharing 8 short blogs on the leaks I have seen in law firms where they are needlessly losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Law firms:  If your lawyers are not recording all their time, how do you know if the work they are doing is profitable?

You don’t!

Providing you have a decent case management system, then you would think life would be sweet.

But no.

The biggest problem is not that lawyers forget to time-record, the biggest problem is what is going on in their heads. 

How they think and what they say to themselves impacts on whether they record all their time on a job.

And it’s not rational.

This is what I hear all the time:

“I shouldn’t have taken all that time to do the work, so I’m not going to record all the time, and so they don’t.”

Whether it’s a trainee or someone with 20 years’ PQE or more, I’ve heard it.

In fact, I remember a barrister working within a law firm who had 20 years’ experience saying that very thing in a workshop.  I.e. that she was taking too long and comparing herself with some imaginary barristers with the same number of years call as her and coming off badly.

It's totally irrational but very commonplace and is going on in your firm too – guaranteed.

You probably already know this yet haven’t solved the problem.

You must be able to get your lawyers to understand that recording all their time is vital for the business and they won’t be chastised for taking too long.

 You must appeal to their rational mind and manage their fears.  If you haven’t succeeded yet, may I suggest you get in touch.