Wednesday, 23 January 2019

How To Minimize Law Firm Ebilling Write Downs

By Catherine Bell


Stepping out of an already established legal organization to start up your own organization creates room for growth. However, success is not achieved easily due to a set of challenges. Most legal firms face problems because most of their work is not paid. According to research forty percent of time spent in a legal office is not billed. For any lawyer, time not billed translates to reduced income. Here are few steps to reduce law firm ebilling write downs.

Time management in law firms is important. Lawyers might charge the amount they should be paid on two bases. This might be on hourly but some might charge a contingency fee for any case they present in court. They should do a comparison between the two to ascertain which fee is more beneficial to them. They should also factor in the billed and the non-billed time. Though most of them assume that non-billed time, it might assist them in doing productive activities in their lifetime.

Also, provide your customers with valuable information on what they should do. For instance, you can make an agreement on how they should pay their fee. If you do not provide the clients with good policy on the terms of payment or how to resolve various disputes in the firm, they might fail to agree with you.

Although written fee agreements are useful when working on a contingency fee, most states expect lawyers to provide written fee agreements irrespective of payment method agreed upon at the beginning. When writing fee agreements, it is important to consider a budget a client is likely to work with depending on the nature of the case, financial strength and time. This helps clear any doubts a client might have about fees.

Make sure that you provide an invoice that can be understood by your client. You should also know that clients have a clue about how much they should pay for you. If you provide an unrealistic invoice, your clients will automatically ask for water-downs. Complaints can also arise during payment if the invoice does not align well with the client requirements.

You should make sure clients sign the payment agreement. This is because clients might have a habit of bargaining the fee they should pay on the last day of payment. The amount they should pay and the day and time the payment should clearly be indicated.

While it is advisable to pen down e-bills to solve fee disputes, you should only agree to adjust fees to match the value of the case. However, you should not resort to habitual write-offs as this could diminish the value of your practice. Clients will take advantage of your habit to ask for more write-downs which affect the company billing efficiency.

Make sure you provide the correct techniques for lawyers. At the time of compliance and accounting, these tools play an important role in the law company. Attorneys will do better with tools designed specifically for their needs/




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