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Legal Billing
How To Fight Resistance To Technology In The Workplace
You find some great new technology that is going to save time, save money, and generally make your legal practice more successful across the board. You enthusiastically roll out new legal billing and accounting software and are disappointed when you get nothing but complaints, defiance and a call to return to the old way of doing things. Simply stammering, “But…but…it’s better” isn’t going to solve the problem but there are ways you can convince the naysayers to give the new system a chance.
- Lead From The Top – The first people you have to get on board are the top level staff. If a senior attorney is badmouthing the lawyer billing software then the junior attorneys are going to fall in behind. That doesn’t mean you try to suppress their opinions but if you win over the top people in the firm, it will be easier to convince others.
- Listen To Concerns – Don’t dismiss the cynics even if their objections are unreasonable. Their concerns may seem trivial to you but they are important to them. For example a common fear with cloud software is the insecurity of putting sensitive information on the internet. Show them time billing software reviews from credible publications that demonstrate how encryption and other data protection techniques keep the data even safer online than it is in your office.
- Make It Personal – An attorney doesn’t really care if the new time and billing software is going to make the bookkeeper’s reconciliations faster any more than the bookkeeper cares that the attorney’s timekeeping will be easier and more accurate. Relate the technology to each particular job and show how that person’s professional life will be improved.
- Remember The People – We love technology here at Easy Soft and genuinely believe that the right software tools are a key component to a successful legal practice. However our software is only as good as the people using it. Your staff is the real strength in your practice. Never push a technology solution so hard that you forget about the people.
No matter how much law practice management software will improve your firm’s performance in the long run, transition to a new system is always difficult. Approach the change in a positive and constructive manner. Value your staff’s opinions. Accept the learning curve. Do all that and you can facilitate the change.
Contact Easy Soft to find out more about how our software tools simplify and automate your legal practice.
The Most Important Purchase When Starting A New Law Firm
Many attorneys dream of leaving the stress of large law firms, hoping to have greater control of their destinies by starting a solo or small law practice. However one of the biggest obstacles is money. It’s going to cost thousands or even tens of thousands to go out on your own, and it may be years before you make that money back.
You can cut those startup costs by realizing many of those amenities you had at the big practice aren’t so much necessities as they are just really, really nice to have. Believe it or not, that expensive leather chair with the lumbar support and neck massager isn’t actually critical to a successful law practice. However, be careful. Although you should be willing to cut out unnecessary luxuries, don’t make the mistake of skipping vital purchases like billing software for lawyers.
Now at this point you are rolling your eyes and saying, “Yeah, right, the software company says software is important.” OK we are a little biased but we genuinely believe that high quality legal billing and accounting software is going to save you money in the long run.
Yes, you can keep your books with a pencil and a spiral notebook, but is that a good idea? Manual methods are slow and error-prone. Who’s going to be wasting hours on bookkeeping? You. Who wants to pay an attorney to be a bookkeeper? By using dedicated lawyer billing software the computer does the hard work and you don’t have to waste time that would be better spent working on cases and finding new clients.
We recommend looking at the cloud versions of our time and billing software for lawyers. The low monthly fee is often easier for new firms to afford than the cost of a desktop software package. Of course the advantage of the desktop version is you pay once and then use it forever, so either is a great choice for a new practice.
Contact us to find out more about how Easy Soft affordable and full-featured legal practice management software is an essential part of any successful law practice.
Starting A Solo Law Practice? You Don’t Have To Go It Alone
Experienced attorneys advise law school students who want to form solo practices right after graduation that it’s best to work for a large law firm first. This allows new attorneys to learn the ins and outs of the business of practicing law and the realities of handling clients, filing documents and going to court before forming a solo practice.
After a few years in a large practice an attorney may find that the benefits are hard to leave behind. The security, large client list and technology access can be so appealing the lawyer decides to stay. However you should know that even a small firm can afford the kind of law practice management software tools that used to be available only major practices.
Powerful and affordable attorney time and billing software such as Easy TimeBill is easily available to the solo attorney on a limited budget. You don’t need to leave behind the ability to track your time, print professional invoices and track client account balances. In fact this kind of software is even more important to the solo practice than a large firm since you don’t have a bookkeeper handling the accounts for you.
Time and billing software for lawyers does more than just act as a glorified calculator. Features such as the built-in conflict checking system protect you from putting hours into a case only to realize you have a conflict of interest. Productivity tools such as a calendar and document tracking keep you on top of all aspects of a case regardless of the type of law you practice.
Easy TimeBill includes the escrow software features needed by law practices. Track all the funds belonging to each matter separately even if they are deposited in the same trust account. Ensure you never accidental spend Client A’s money on Client B’s expense. Generate three-way reconciliations required by most states.
If you are in real estate law or family practice, then we have other product that work with our legal billing and accounting software to provide additional support. It is like having a team of professionals working for you. Contact us to find out more about how our products help all law offices, from solo practices to multinational firms, automate and simplify their work.
Free Training Resources For Easy TimeBill Users
We’ve designed Easy TimeBill to have a simple and intuitive interface, allowing you to start using it confidently within minutes of installation. However simple doesn’t mean simplistic and our legal billing and accounting software includes many powerful features you might need a little help with to use to their best.
Your first stop for information would be the lawyer billing software‘s extensive online help system. Just hit F1 or select Help -> How Do I from the top menu to find easy answers to most of the questions you might have on how to use the tools and reports included. You can also select Help -> PDF Manual to see a comprehensive manual you can view or print out.
If you still have questions then come to our side to view free legal billing software training videos that take you step by step through everything from initial setup to generating invoices to bank reconciliation. Here you will also find videos on our other products such as Easy Trust and Easy HUD.
Sometimes you need more personal attention or have specific questions on how our time and billing software can be used for your unique needs. In that case we suggest you attend one of our free training webinars. Every two weeks we offer a live online training session on Easy TimeBill and Easy Trust. These sessions are a great way to stay on top of the latest laws and how they might affect your practice, and are an opportunity for you to ask specific questions about the software.
Finally, you can always contact us directly with your questions. Our team of support professionals is happy to share their expert knowledge of any of our legal practice management software with you. We can help you install, configure and use our products in ways that will improve your practice’s efficiency and profits, and help you help your clients.
When Bad Hard Drives Happen To Good People
Settle in, boys and girls, for a little story. It’s a scary story but don’t worry–it has a happy ending. It’s a moralistic little tale about something that happened to one of our colleagues, but doesn’t have to happen to your lawyer billing software.
This gentleman has his vital computer files stored on a mirror drive–a mirror drive is an array of two hard drives. Every time the computer writes a file, it writes it to both drives. That way if one drive fails, the information is safe on the other drive. Recently he decided to update one of his drivers–a driver is a program that tells your computer how to operate equipment like printers, video cards and hard drives. When he rebooted his system, the hard drives had disappeared.
He spent the next two days trying to find the drives. The physical drives were in the computer of course, but Windows couldn’t see them. I’ll spare you the long story of restore points and updates and blue screens and lots and lots of profanity. In the end, he found both drives had been corrupted and all of the information was lost. Over ten years of financial records, work documents, correspondence, family photos and more were gone.
Fortunately, though the information was gone from his computer, it wasn’t gone from this world. He uses a backup utility that copies his data into the cloud. It will take him weeks to recover a hard drive full of information, but at least he has that option. Without it, he would have no way to get the data back.
So what does this story have to do with attorney time and billing software? Disasters like this can happen to any of us. A corrupted driver, a virus, a fire, a hurricane or a zombie apocalypse can destroy your computer and even your local backups. Data loss could drive a legal practice out of business so you need an offsite solution.
The cloud version of Easy Soft billing software for lawyers maintains your sensitive case files in our offsite servers. We use technologies such as mirror drives to ensure your data is protected from hardware failure as well as multiple periodic backups to keep your information safe even if the mirrors fail. Of course your data is encrypted and protected against unauthorized intrusion.
If you prefer to use the desktop version of Easy Soft time and billing software then we strongly recommend you also use a cloud-based backup solution to protect your data.
Strong backups are just one of the many advantages of cloud-based law practice management software. Contact us at 800-905-7638 to find out if the cloud is the right environment for your law firm.
May 15, 2013 in Legal Billing, Legal Software, Legal Technologies
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Technorati Tagged : attorney time and billing software, billing software for lawyers, law practice management software, lawyer billing software, time and billing software
Technorati Tagged : attorney time and billing software, billing software for lawyers, law practice management software, lawyer billing software, time and billing software
How To Hire A Staff Without Hiring A Staff
Large law firms can hire teams of specialists to handle everything from balancing the books to maintaining the office computers to making the coffee. Unfortunately small firms, especially single-attorney practices, can’t afford to bring on a host of employees. The good news is that these small businesses can get the skill they need from dedicated legal billing and accounting software like Easy TimeBill.
Time and billing software is like having a bookkeeper. The software makes it easy to record your billable hours and expenses, maintain separate billing for each matter and send out professional looking invoices to your clients. You can see at a glance the current payment status of each account, automatically calculate late fees and print checks for your vendors.
Add the Easy Trust trust accounting system to the mix and you have a dedicated escrow accountant at your fingertips. Maintain your trust accounts in full compliance with strict state and federal regulations, generate three-way reconciliation reports required by most bar associations and keep each matter’s funds separate even if they are in the same account.
Attorney practice management software acts as your personal assistant, checking for conflicts of interest that might jeopardize your case. Practice management tools like calendars, to-do lists and case notes keep you organized. Document management links electronic documents to each case file so you don’t have to worry about misplacing a key file when you need it.
Get the cloud version of our attorney time and billing software and you get your own IT department. You don’t need to concern yourself with software installation, updates, data security or backups. We handle all the technical details so you can focus on helping your clients.
With the right software tools, even a one-person practice can operate as though it was an elite team of specialized professionals. Get the skills you need at a fraction of the cost of hiring even one of these people much less all of them. Your virtual assistants work day and night, don’t take vacations and don’t need medical insurance.
But you’ll still have to make your own coffee.
