Time Management is the Flip Side of the Coin to Billing Time

dave’s techtips

Time Management is the Flip Side of the Coin to Billing Time

Better time management can reduce long hours in the office spent meeting your billable time goal. Here are a selection of time management best practices:

Keep track of time spent on all tasks (billable and non-billable):

You need to know where you spend your time — billable and non-billable. You can see which are the unproductive time wasters and concentrate on your productive tasks. Today there are technological tools that will highlight time wasting activities.

Prioritize tasks: Time management is partly developing the ability to discern what needs to be done from the rest and then doing it — promptly.

Create a To-Do list and sort your tasks into four categories:

„ Important and Urgent: Do these First — they are the most important work to be done today.

„ Important but not Urgent:

Make room for these... they are longer term goals; schedule them into your day after the important and urgent tasks.

„ Urgent but not Important: These are Time Sinks… schedule them low in priority.

„ Neither Important nor Urgent:

Put on the Never Never list — they are not taking you toward any of your goals.

Ask assigning partner for a billable hours goal for a task (keep assignments on budget):

When someone assigns a task, ask “How much time do you want me to put into this before we sit down for a review?” You both establish a block of time and a deadline for the task and avoid “project creep.”

Break complex tasks into smaller, manageable bites:

Break bigger tasks into bitesized chunks and allocate those to your time schedule.

© 2022 David J. Bilinsky

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While measuring billable targets and billable rates are fine, they are too early in the cash flow cycle to translate into cash in hand. Make sure you are measuring collected rates and cash collections and tie these metrics to performance evaluations to keep your time billers focused on producing work that leads to collections and not just monthly invoice targets.

Lastly, pay draws based on accounts paid, not fees billed. Cash is king and notwithstanding accountants and their accrual systems, you can’t spend cash you haven’t received.

These are a sampling of the techniques that can be implemented by law firms to increase their bottom line without flogging associates and partners to death and hopefully increasing associates quality of life. We can do a lot of things different.

This article is excerpted from an upcoming article on the Rules For Winning The War For Talent While Improving Profitability by Steven Campbell CPA and David J. Bilinsky for the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Magazine. Steven Campbell is a Consultant with Acumen Consulting, LLC. Steven has been a pioneer in data-driven profitability analysis and performance management in law firms.

The views expressed herein are strictly those of David Bilinsky and do not reflect the opinions of the Law Society of British Columbia, CBABC, or their respective members.

David J. Bilinsky is the principal of Thoughtful Legal Management, a technology and practice management consultancy and is the former Practice Management Advisor, Law Society of British Columbia. Email: daveb@thoughtfullaw.com Blog: thoughtfullaw.com