It’s the end of a long week. You’re ready to go home and relax — but you haven’t entered your time for the week yet. Maybe you have a notepad or a spreadsheet where you’ve entered some tasks throughout the week. Or, even worse, maybe you scribble out your tasks right then and try to remember how much time you spent on them. Does this sound familiar?
The Ugly Truth
Time tracking is a frustrating chore — one that is often neglected. Attorneys dislike doing it because it is tedious, the technology available is difficult or cumbersome, and often they have to double or even triple-enter their work across multiple applications: task managers, time trackers, invoicing systems, etc.
Every single how-to article and “case study” about attorneys and time tracking says the same thing: the best way to take notes or record events is contemporaneously. As a lawyer, you already know this.
You wouldn’t wait until Friday to write down every important detail from a deposition last Monday. Why do that with your timekeeping?
Reconstructive time entry is a recipe for disaster. It is dangerously easy to under-bill or over-bill your client. Both can harm your law firm.
Imagine a Better Way
What if your task manager was your time tracker and your invoicing system? Imagine sitting down at your desk, seeing all of your tasks and events laid out in front of you, and as you progress through them, your time is automatically tracked and assigned to your client, ready to bill. Now it’s Friday afternoon, and it’s already done.
You need a system that integrates everything. You already have to manage deadlines, events, and tasks for your clients. Why shouldn’t that system also track your time, and automatically bill that time to your clients? And why shouldn’t that system easily create invoices from your schedule? Suddenly, time tracking becomes a handy side-effect of simply managing your calendar and to-do list.
The One True Time Tracking Hack
There’s really only one way to truly boost time tracking:
Remove Friction.
Every extra step between you and tracking your time is one more reason why you won’t. But if you can:
- Manage your to-do list and upcoming events all in one place
- Automatically turn your to-dos and events into tracked, billable time
- Create a new timer instantly when you start a new task
Time tracking becomes effortless
Implement a system in your law firm that integrates your task management, scheduling, time tracking, and invoicing all in one.
One system that does this is TimeNet Law. Built from the ground up for attorneys, TimeNet Law will help you bill more accurately — guaranteed. We made time tracking so good, you’ll actually use it.