Post by Daniel Nunes, muchBeta’s Chief Financial Officer:

Your LawRD account has a preset matter: General Internal Matters.

This matter is devised for logging the time spent on tasks not to be billed to clients. Let’s consider two examples that will show how useful this particular matter can be:

• Lawyers will log here the time spent on weekly firm meetings.
• The partner in charge of back office chores (i.e. overviewing accounts receivable and accounts payable) may log that time spent into this General Internal Matters.

On both cases, by not logging, the data on time spent will not be realistic. This time is actually allocated and is of the firm’s interest. For the weekly meetings instance, it will look as if there is a day in the week that less work is done, whereas the partner in charge of the back office tasks seems to put in less than all the others who just work for the clients matters.

Checking the Status tab within General Internal Matters, allows for consulting data on how do internal affairs affect the overall firm performance as well as, keeping up with its evolution through time.

Following the said example and figuring that we are in early March 2010, we may state that:

• The total amount of time spent on Internal Affairs is increasing by the month (Time chart).
• Consequently to that, losses related to this matter are growing (Money chart)
• The General Internal Matters quota for the Inefficiency Share will rise up to 45% by December 2010 (Productivity chart). The Inefficiency Share is the ratio of the non billed time on a matter and the total non billed time on all the firm’s matters.

In presence of this data, it is up to the firm whether or not to hire to someone to supervise internal affairs, thus freeing lawyers to just working on clients matters. The best first step in order to best go through this issue might be checking reports on the time  each lawyer wastes on internal affairs:

Sometimes there’s the need to go back to square one. This should have been the first post ever on LawRD’s Blog: LawRD, what is it good for?

There’s a debate going in the law milieu on whether or not hourly rates are the best way for charging  legal services. We will not go into that! It is not up to us to tell lawyers what is best for them on that concern. What we can state for sure is that LawRD meets the several models of fee convention that lawyers choose for their clients’ matters. LawRD allows you to bill hourly, flat fee, contingency fees and success fee.

Whichever way a lawyer chooses when billing fees, there is an unavoidable fact: lawyers do invest time on matters. An example: when emailing to a client during working hours, a lawyer is investing  time which has a cost that is equal to the lawyer’s hourly rate times the total time spent on that task.

An issue arises here: how can lawyers account for their cost per hour? That calculus can either be simple or complex. In a law firm the cost can be achieved by adding the lawyer’s salaries, bonuses and other costs that are to that person related, divided by the total amount of hours the lawyer worked during a certain period of time (a month, a year). A solo practice will have to bear in mind a minimum amount so it is profitable. For instance: if a lawyer needs to have a minimum of $15,000/month proceeds and is willing to put in 150 hours, the hourly cost will be $100.

Knowing the cost is just the half of it. The other half is logging the time spent on each matter. Any way… there is only one way of doing that: using a timesheet. Such a sheet can be as simple as piece of paper stapled to the folder wherein they will hand write down the time spent. That will do the job, but can it help answering swiftly to issues such as:

• How much time did I spend on a matter?
• What is the total cost of a matter?
• Is the matter profitable?

This is where LawRD - Reports on Demand comes into action! Use LawRD and the answers are just a click away. Check this example from LawRD’s Demo Account:

The Total line displays an amount of 62:30 which has a cost of $8,210.25. This is  a hourly rate matter and there is an amount of $14,370.00 billed, therefore it shows a profit of $6.159,75. There you have the answers for the previous questions. It just took a click on the Timesheet tab.

The Timesheet tab still remains relevant for matters that are not billed by the hour. The reason why is very simple: there is the need to match the fee agreed with the client with the actual costs of that matter. Recurring again to the Demo Account, you can notice that the amount of €1.500,00 was agreed with the client:

By clicking on Timesheet you can answer to:

• How many hours were spent on the matter? A: 9:35
• What is the total cost of the matter? A: $1,012.25
• Is this matter profitable? A: yes, it shows a $987.75 profit, at the moment.

Now we can answer to what is LawRD good for? In a sentence: LawRD allows for a swift answer on any matter’s results.

The tasks submitted into the timesheets must be approved by the matters managers. Upon such an approval, managers will examin and validate data remaining available for future billing sheets.

To do that, just select the day(s) to be sent for approval. The user below chose only November 9 to be sent:

LawRD lets you select a complete week to be sent for approval, in a single click. Just go to that week’s tasks total amount (in this example the box underneath 6h21m was ticked). Thus, the totality of tasks on the days in that week is automatically selected:

Once the days are selected, the user will click on send for approval to get to the ….

… Description box wherein, data that the managers may find relevant is to be displayed. The Approve now box will automatic approve the timesheet, when the user is also that matter’s manager. For instance, in case the user is also the manager of the D015 matter, the 2h21m task will be immediately approved.

To finish off just click Send it.

Adding to the new website and demo account, during this Fall 2009 other new features are now enriching LawRD. Such an upgrade results from our users community feedback, to whom we are thankful. The improvements are as follows:

• Events: from now on, it is possible to relate events to contacts and matters, by logging on LawRD important dates referring to actions and tasks needed to be acomplished. Such events are either public or private, in the latter case, they will be available only to whoever did add them.
  

• Setting fees per lawyer on matters: up until now, LawRD enabled billing matters accordingly to each intervening lawyer fee. Now, it is possible to set for any given matter, other fees different from the ones preset per lawyer.
  

  When setting up a matter´s team, LawRD will display the standard fees preset on each lawyer’s file, in case the fee is other than the preset one, just change it.
  

• Setting up a success fee in a flat fee matter: by the time a new matter is added, this value is a forecast which can be adjusted when the billing sheet is issued.
  

• Adding a new type of matter within the matter adding assistant: when adding a new matter, if it doesn´t match any of the existing types, now, one can create a new type without needing to close the matter assistant.
  

• The timesheet tab in Matter displays costs and fees columns: this makes way for a easier check on a matter profitability. At any time it is possible to have a grasp on the matter billing potential (Fee column) and the assigned lawyer internal costs (Costs column).
  

• Deleting contacts and matters: this new feature allows to delete unintended duplication of matters and contacts that usually occur during the early usage of LawRD.
  This feature is available, by default, to users on the Administrator and Manager profiles ( the latter can delete only the matters he/she manages and no one else’s) , but its settings can be changed by altering profiles:
  

• Billing sheet deduction row: when issuing a billing sheet there’s the possibility of mentioning a deduction to the total amount.
  

• New billing sheet PDF layout: the PDF billing sheet layout has been upgraded to a nicer look.
  

• Relating users to matters via users tab: that will make it simpler to relate lawyers to the firm matters which are logged in LawRD. Whenever a lawyer is related to a matter, Lawrd will email her/him notifying of that.
  

• Timesheet status: timesheets display now the following different status:
  No tasks: timesheet open by the user with no tasks logged in yet;
  Clear: timesheet open by the user wherein tasks have been logged but not yet approved
  To approve: meaning that the timesheet was sent for approval, but it hasn´t been reviewed and approved yet. In this instance there is the need for the user supposed to approve it to do so;
  Closed: timesheet approved.
  

• Searching through comments on matters and contacts:
  

• Self-suggesting tags: when adding tags, LawRD will suggest tags already added by users.
  

Other issues and glitches reported since the Summer 2009 upgrading are now corrected, e.g. retainers, reports and budget fee matters.

2010 will bring new developments, so we invite everyone interested in LawRD to keep posted on this blog. Thus, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

LawRD issues reports on demand on 6 entities: Clients, Matters, Rainmakers, Managers, Lawyers and overall firm performance.

For that purpose it is necessary that time spent and expenses on matters are inserted in LawRD. Thus, such data must be input in a quick, simple and swift way.

These were the guidelines presiding the development of LawRD’s user interface, and so making it user friendly for lawyers.

There are 3 ways to input time spent and are found in the Timesheet tab:

• The Timesheet matrix: by clicking on the cell found on the junction of the client/matter line with the date column,  users insert  the time spent that day and on that matter:
  
  In case the matter is not yet available, it can be added using the -Add Matter- field.

• The quick insert box. This box enables an easy way to insert time spent  when the matrix is busy with lots of lines. LawRD, by default, shows the present date as the one in which the matter is being input with the time spent:
  

• The Timer:
  

Expenses are inputted in the My Expenses tab, and once data is written just click on Create Expense for it to be included in its due matter:

LawRD will display a list of expenses already inserted and their status (approved or not approved):

With LawRD, lawyers and law firm managers can control the critical variables on their practices:

• The revenue per client and matter;
• Tracking time and productivity of their teams.

The main goal is the issuing of reports on the fly, whenever and wherever there is an Internet connection: LawRD is available as SaaS application!

Check on this presentation all functions of LawRD, in our SlideShare space: