10 minutes vs. 100 minutes
By Julie A. Schaefer
Learn how Ray Bonnabeau, the first name on the Edina, Minnesota, Technology Law firm, BSSD, and Bob Doe, the Managing Partner, get instant overview of the firm's activity, anytime, from anyplace by using a hosted software called TimeSolv.
It’s Saturday in Minnesota. Three songbirds are trilling in the leafy shade as you walk
from your car to your law office door in your golf shirt and jeans. It’s the end of
the month and you’ll be in the office a long time today. The clients have to get
invoices if you’re going to get paid and the family is counting on some summer
fun. This perplexing experience can’t be helped.
The thriving small law firm of Bonnabeau, Salyers, Stites & Doe (“BSSD”), however, discovered they could control the process instead. Apparently, the difference was night and day – even going from losing to gaining sanity.
BSSD is a Minneapolis-based boutique law firm that drafts prepares, reviews and
negotiates hundreds of information technology contracts for healthcare,
insurance and financial entities nationwide. BSSD’s former ideation grew to a
firm of seven attorneys after it went to the TimeSolv Website and tested
TimeSolv Legal time and billing early in 2001 for free.
The negative impact of its previous system was sapping management and profitability.
“We would have gone crazy if we hadn’t changed over,” asserts Bob Doe, who is the current managing partner. Raymond R. Bonnabeau, the managing partner during the transition, concurred. “I would have been looking for a bell tower. TimeSolv took a heck of a lot less time and is invaluable unless you have an administrative person you just want to keep busy.”
Different reasons
Billing timely now and no longer weighed down with the problems created
by their previous time-tracking method, Doe and Bonnabeau agree that
attorneys and managing partners are attracted to TimeSolv Legal for different
reasons. Attorneys like that:
• Time entry is quick and easy
• Can enter time from anyplace
Managing partners and the first named attorney on the firm like that TimeSolv:
• Organizes everything efficiently
• Is easier to manage
• Centralizes entries and billing
So dramatically did TimeSolv shave down the task that Bonnabeau, who
used the program for 2 years until his managing partner days were over, recalls
that TimeSolv completed the billing in 1/10th of the time it had taken before,
which would be a decrease of 90%.
What’s interesting is that TimeSolv, on average, saved the managing partner
about half the time, plus about four hours for each other timekeeper. The
difference? In my opinion, pain and suffering. The previous emotional bog with
a tortuous task was so great a cost that the relief was huge. In general, I find that
attorneys recognize the value of pain and suffering for their clients but often
fail to measure its cost in their own situations. Yes, you can do without streamlining,
but what is it doing to your life and your practice?
Hosted – and Backed Up – Online
The TimeSolv system is hosted online with backups every five minutes, so
data is never lost since it’s managed at a data center and not on the user’s computer.
The system has never been down in the eight years of use at BSDDA, and
has been completely predictable with real-time updates and tracking missing
time. Time and notes can be entered and accessed from anywhere by all Timekeepers
- from the computer, an iPhone or Blackberry, laptop or from home. It
has administrative access settings, to insure that each individual views only
relevant information.
The steps required to populate the system with clients and matters didn’t take long,
Bonnabeau said. It takes 20 seconds, if that, to create a new client matter. Give it
a name. Hit save and you’re done, he said. Also, he said, you don’t have to think up
your own activity descriptions because a list is provided such as “Conference call
with client,” and you can add activities.
Before discovering TimeSolv, each attorney could take a good half-day on Saturday
piecing hours together in Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet, said Doe. Bonnabeau then would have to crossreference, do the math by calculator, crosscheck and check it again if there was a discrepancy with all those .2s and .9s, and aggregate into one bill. It could take an hour just to assemble into one bill, he said.
Keep human frailty to a minimum
“I’d see five legal conferences on various days. I would have to look at page 18 and
page 27 or whatever to be sure the legal conference appeared on the same day for
each attorney involved. It was a terrible waste of time,” said Bonnabeau.
“With TimeSolv, the activities have been automatically broken out into the respective
client bills. The “Legal Conferences” are coordinated on the same page next to
the same entry. I can make any changes as necessary, then all it takes is to hit a
print key and the bills print. That takes a half hour, if that.”
“TimeSolv is extremely reliable and keeps getting better and better with additional
functionality. In the last few months, we have been especially pleased with Spell
Check for the Notes section where attorneys record what they did in that period
of time. The person who then runs the bill isn’t finding spelling errors. It reduces
the likelihood of getting garbage in.”
Tracking the firm
Yet, as the first named attorney on the firm, the biggest advantage to Bonnabeau
is the instant overview to track how everyone is doing rather than a single
opportunity each month to review.
“Before discovering TimeSolv we didn’t know a good month from a bad month.
Now at any given moment at any given time, I can log in, see what everyone is
working on and create multiple reports for analysis on productivity. What clients
have been billed? What clients have paid? It’s a quick, easy, useable system.
It’s like electronic access to a bank account rather than a surprise at the end of
the month. If I learn that someone’s billed only 20 hours, I have to ask what’s
going on there so we can react and resolve it before days or weeks pass.
“Also, as a cash basis firm we are taxed on what we’ve received. I can just run
those numbers and give it to the accountant.”
As with most processes, adoption is critical. The ease and efficiencies of using TimeSolv
make quick adoption highly probable; however, as Bob Doe stated, “if we had an
attorney who did not record entries regularly, it would seriously impede the efficiencies
of the system to the firm.”
Conclusion
Revenues have steadily increased in the time frame the firm has used TimeSolv
Legal and continuing with Excel spreadsheets and Word documents for time
tracking sooner or later would have had a material impact on the firm. Reconstructing
the week was eating time more fruitfully applied elsewhere.
Training is nearly unnecessary. “All timekeepers met at one time for 30
minutes of on-line training in my office, and TimeSolv has always made available
a knowledgeable support person throughout the years,” said Bonnabeau.
“I would recommend TimeSolv. It’s pretty darn easy. In one half hour, we were set
to run it. You log on to your Internet access. Enter password. Bam. You’re
there.”
Visit the TimeSolv Homepage today and make time and billing happen for
you as automatically as possible. While you’re there, make sure to register
for a 30-day free trial at: http://www.timesolv.com or call USA 1-877-438-3572
Julie A. Schaefer is principal of the You Manage Law newsletter based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Letters of Reference The You Manage Law newsletter was founded to encourage lawyers in small to medium sized law firms to take time to evaluate their practices and avoid inefficiency in terms of business practices and marketing.
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Julie A. Schaefer, Marketing Coordinator | Ph: 612-810-4440 | Alt ph: 952-473-9677
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