Billing Software for Lawyers Keeps Track and Frees You to concentrate on Work

If there is one thing attorneys dislike but find it unavoidable, is to keep track of the hours they have put in for each client, the money received and associated with book keeping. As clientele grows, they have to devote more time to such book keeping activities and find it clashes with their main work: legal practice. If done manually, it involves long hours of work. An attorney billing software or a lawyer billing software, as it is known, uses computerized technology to help lawyers.

Most lawyers usually operate on an hourly billing model. If he has only a few clients, it does not take much time to keep track. However, as clients grow the work load increases. A legal time and billing software is just what a busy lawyer needs to remain up to date on the accounts side without losing focus of his practice.

Some lawyers work on a fixed fee basis, regardless of the number of hours or days a case takes up, with incidental expenses charged separately as they crop up with the progress of the case. In such cases too the legal billing software proves invaluable, keeping the fee separate from the various expenses that are all accounted separately. A lawyer can easily generate reports and print these for his and his client's convenience and for transparency in dealings.

Some lawyers work on a retainer plus hourly billing basis with expenses accounted for separately. A retainer or advance needs to be accounted for under a separate head and might complicate matters were it not for the sophisticated facilities of the legal billing and accounting software so easily available these days. At any point in time an attorney can review account status and if need be call for funds to top up the account.

Law office billing software is just as useful for those lawyers involved in personal injury cases, working on a contingency billing method. The law firm billing software has inbuilt utilities that permit him to calculate the claim amount, his percentage if he wins and the costs that he incurs, all under separate heads.

In each case, the lawyer simply enters the figures in a menu-based screen and the software takes care of most of the things in the background. Since accounts are always current, he never faces any problems with audit and can devote more time to working on cases, gaining more cases and generating more revenue. A well thought out and designed legal billing software will integrate all financial transactions in an easy to use interface with facilities to generate reports, bills and statements at the click of a button. In today's busy environment, the software is indispensable.

Attorney Billing Software For Higher Productivity and Profits

When you started your career as an independent attorney, you may not have anticipated it. Back office operations including accounting, bookkeeping and tracking of billable hours can actually eat into your time and keep you from concentrating on the important task of handling clients' cases. Have you considered using attorney billing software to take care of all the complex and time consuming accounting tasks? Legal billing software takes care of all the back office operations and frees you to concentrate on your legal profession, handle more cases profitably, and yet be relaxed.

As an attorney, you would be handling cases on a variety of payment options. One very popular method is the billable hours basis. It does involve your having to keep records of the number of hours worked and then issue invoices, keep track of payments received and balance outstanding while preparing the next invoice and related issues. In addition to billable hours, there is the matter of keeping track of expenses that need to be included in the bill yet maintained separately. Legal time and billing software handles all this effortlessly. If you have agreed to work on a retainer-cum-billable hours basis then your invoice for replenishment shows how the advance is used. As if this is not enough, there is the matter of trust bookkeeping and legal billing concerning trust accounting and bank reconciliations. A negative balance in trust accounting means you have used trust funds and this could reflect adversely on you, that could very well be prevented by using legal billing and accounting software. Why let all this happen, when a fully integrated lawyer billing software works seamlessly in the background to handle everything, generate reports and keep you updated of each client's account and each matter in a very easy and time-saving way?

When you are so busy with your professional life and handle so many clients, it is not easy to keep track of each one manually or by using a spreadsheet—both are laborious and time-consuming. You may overlook so many small outstanding amounts that add up to a sizeable sum. Law firm billing software improves your cash flow by generating reports of such unpaid amounts periodically. The law office billing software is a computerized process with no margin for error and perfect accuracy in generating invoices, detailed statements and records for audit and in case of disputes. This also enhances your image with a client since there is transparency and accuracy in billing and accounting.

The beauty of this attorney accounting software is that it keeps accurate track of all your various bookkeeping, billing and accounting methods, generates reports for you, automatically generates bills periodically, payments statements, bank reconciliations, collection reminders and the important matter of trust bookkeeping and billing, in compliance with existing laws of your state.

The Right Attorney Billing Software Makes Life Easier For Lawyers

Unlike other countries, attorneys in the States operate on billable hours, quite different from methods employed in other businesses. In today's hectic world, as the workload on an attorney increases, he finds it difficult to keep track of the advances and the billable hours he has worked for each client. The best solution is an attorney billing software. The right legal billing software will take care of all financial related activities of a lawyer's firm. The right software handles matter based record keeping, trust activities, integrated billing, reports and summaries efficiently and in a user-friendly way so that even those with passing knowledge can use it personally.

Legal billing is done in a variety of ways:

• Fixed fee basis.
• Hourly billing is another method in use where the time an attorney spends on the matter along with incidental costs are recorded and a lawyer bills his client accordingly.
• In a retainer based hourly billing method, the advance paid by the client is adjusted against the hours a lawyer puts in and deducted from the retainer with additional requests for funds.
• In personal injury cases, most lawyers will usually work on a contingency billing basis where the amount of costs and fixed percentage previously decided upon are deducted from the settlement amount and paid to the lawyer. If he loses, he gains nothing.

If a mistake occurs in the billable hours then either it results in the lawyer incurring a loss or the client raising doubts, resulting in loss of goodwill. Legal time and billing software eases the burden of bookkeeping. The convenience of such law office billing software can be gauged from the fact that even if one client entrusts the law with separate legal matters, each is tracked and accounted for separately, avoiding confusion, disputes and doubts. A positive balance in one matter cannot be offset against a negative balance in another matter without the client's consent and thus the legal billing and accounting software keeps financial matters transparent for both the lawyer and the client.

A further benefit of using the law firm billing software is that it keeps complete audit track of all billing and related matters to comply with existing laws in each state. In the right lawyer billing software the client's advances are accounted for separately in attorney trust accounts to comply with laws. This relieves lawyers of this concern, helps them concentrate on their profession and generate more revenues. It is obvious that the benefits of using the right lawyer billing software with all the desired functions soon repay the costs of investing in one.