Create a Seamless Fabrication Bill Format for Legal Documents

Fabrication bill format for Legal

welcome everyone today's cosmics webinar serious presentation how to become a 21st century law firm modern legal billing presenting today we have a Gerber sir director strategic communication at cosmics Erica is nearly a decade of experience in the legal software industry catering to the specialized technology needs of small to mid-sized law firms she's given numerous presentations across the country on legal technologies such as law practice technology management cloud computing legal billing and trust accounting compliance with that I will hand the presentation over to Erica very good thank you so much so before diving into today's topic I just want to give a quick reminder that this is a three-part series we had the first part last week which was on business accounting but of course we do have a recording available today we'll be covering modern legal billing and then on the 26th we'll be talking about compliant trust accounting so keep that in mind marking on your calendar and we look forward to seeing you in those webinars so today as mentioned we are focusing on the billing side of things so the first point we'll talk about is just in general what kind of ties this whole series together is what defines a 21st century law firm and then understanding the legal billing workflow what are all the different components that you need to keep in mind when managing your billing from start to finish and of course how modern tools can enhance your practice now towards the end I will give a little bit of a visual of some of these points utilizing cosmolex for some who are not familiar with cosmolex we are a cloud-based legal practice management software so with that let's first talk about the typical law firm set up specifically for Canadian law firms so there are two categories you likely fall into one of these one is legacy desktop systems definitely the most common for the law firms in Canada is falling into this legacy category those are tools like PC law or easy law they're the ones installed on your server you're managing the data in-house you may be using a very old version as well and there are some points to why some legacy users would look to upgrade to cloud one is those tools are missing cloud benefits so whether it's mobility or you know using different devices none of that's available when dealing with a legacy system also you need to worry about Hardware server requirements the maintenance of those ensuring that everything is up-to-date and working properly this god forbid if those crash whether it's the software itself or your server you may be in a tough spot and then the last point is lack of modern functionality so these tools are excellent tools they're excellent in the functions that they've had and they sometimes improve upon those but the modern features which we'll talk a little bit about today things like client portals or more interactive functions with your clients and more efficiency tools those are not really available so the other category for those who may have looked to leave legacy is the emerging cloud solutions most notable is Clio and one difference with Clio is while you get all the modern functions you know you you're able to have a mobile application your data stored elsewhere you have modern functions it does require a separate generic accounting program like QuickBooks or 0 or something similar so a lot of times that promotes a different challenge because you're lacking the standard compliance that you have in legacy with being able to your taxes have your normal operational accounting and also ensure that your firm remains compliant so we'll talk a little bit about how there are other options out there for modern tools why modern technology is beneficial to your firm and today like I said we're specifically focusing on more of the billing functionality so what defines modern practice management so as consumers of course we've been using cloud for a very long time with all the different type of personal functions you have whether it's online banking or social media or even email which has been around for quite a while now it's all cloud technology the legal industries a little bit slower when it comes to having the latest and greatest in the new functions but think of yourself as a consumer what are the types of tools that you use because at the end of the day your clients are just everyday consumers you're running a service business and you want to ensure it's as convenient and flexible for them as it is when they utilize any other service so let's talk about what defines that 21st century lawyer the first thing is mobility you know being able to use any device so we talked about any device we're talking about it used to be oh can I work on my computer here my computer there or my laptop here in my laptop there but now very often we have multiple devices each we have a laptop a tablet a smartphone maybe a Mac as well a PC here a Mac there there's a lot of different types of devices with different operating platforms different compatibility issues could arise but when you're using cloud technology and modern tools you get that flexibility also that anywhere access so being able to if your home or if you're with a client off-site or if you're in court and you need to be able to access information or update something you no longer have to worry about you know sending a note to your secretary or using an excuse if I'm not in the office I don't have access to that information because at the end of the day you're competing with other law firms and you want to make sure you have the most modern functionality possible to better service your clients if you could pull up the answer to a question or a document that you need in that moment as opposed to having maybe one a two day turnaround it just improves that relationship mobile apps we all use mobile apps as consumers so why not utilize your business through that you know your billing your invoicing your calendar events your tasks your notes all of that can be accessed on your phone today pretty much has sometimes more information than your computer does and then staff from anywhere think from a business perspective you no longer limited to the people who are in the vicinity of your office a lot of outsource trolls whether it be IT consulting or bookkeepers and accountants they no longer have to be nearby they could be in a different province they could be several hours away doesn't matter they can access from wherever they are they're not having to and you're not having to wait for every two to four weeks for them to come in modern features like I mentioned a lot of the legacy tools lack those modern tools yes they they mastered the basics the main compliance that's required but what about that constant continuous improvement the cloud space is definitely an area where there is healthy competition there's a lot of I want to say battling but wanting to grow you know that that seeking growth and improvement over time so you're always going to get on new functions that will improve your firm things like client portals which we'll talk a little bit in a moment connecting directly with your client online payments new integrations all of that expansions happening in the cloud space and then lastly is no IT worries so you may and sometimes this is the main reason for cloud sometimes it's one or the other - no IT means you can focus on what you do loitering handling your clients and their matters in cases not having to worry about regular backups your backups will happen but you're not managing that yourself the system self maintained when you're using modern tools they update themselves you always have the latest and greatest you're not having to worry about who's on what version in your office everybody's on the same version you can go towards going server lists so paperless was a very common and popular concept for many years which is trying to eliminate paper but even serverless a lot of firms want to get the hardware out of their office not having to maintain that and it's possible when you're using cloud applications and of course highly scalable as people join or leave your firm you can easily add or delete them from access there isn't a long onboarding it's not complex you're not having to worry about linking to the server and having the right version and activation keys and all of that goes away so it's highly simplified from an IT perspective now like I said all three of these reasons might make sense to you or one may be a lot more high priority to you than others every firm is a little bit different as to why they consider moving to cloud so with this image up and we have this in all of the series that we're talking about this month but think of all the different tools that you're using for these core functions are they several tools is it one or two tools are they all legacy are they cloud do you have a mix of each are they communicating with each other do they sync at all are you doing double data entry so just think of your firm how its set up and how you complete these functions and if the workflows can be more streamlined by bringing everything together on the same technology so today like I mentioned we're focusing on the billing portion today so we'll talk about overall workflow and how technology like cosmolex can really take you to the next level so the first thing to talk about is the workflow what all needs to happen when you're doing your billing now you may have a strict monthly billing cycle where this entire entire flow kind of opens and closes within a month or you may have to Bill as needed it may depend on when a case closes or you bill when you get to a certain balance it may depend but in general these steps do need to happen so you want them to happen as streamlined as possible this is probably one of the building is one of those areas where a large part of administrative work goes but there's a lot of efficiency tools that can help to cut down the time frame that it takes you to complete all of these tasks so we'll be going into each one of these specifically and then we'll talk a little bit about how modern tools can help so the first is docketing so docketing in general of course is handling your capturing of your time and disbursements ensuring everything is entered now I always recommend to make your entries in the moment if possible latest end of day if you can enforce really good habits and it really is all about habits of making those entries each and every day that will help you in the long run because you're not waiting to the end of the week because you put if you put it off to the end of the week likely it'll get put off to the next week and possibly the end of the month and there's a couple issues with that first is accuracy your memory on what took place and how long it took in the details fades over time so you're kind of trying to fill in the gaps the second is the time that's spent at the end of the month or at the time of billing is then possibly doubled or tripled because you're having to look back and think back on everything that may have been missed so staying on top of those is definitely key but also linking all billable activities you might have events or tasks or notes or time you spent on emails or documents how do you ensure those get billed how do you make sure those don't fall through so there's two sides of it one is whatever you're physically doing ensuring that gets captured and everything else that might possibly slip through having like a method to capture that or at least let you know that items were dropped so when you get those you do that docketing on a regular basis at the end of your billing cycle is when the pre bill review happens so depending on whether you're one attorney or multiple one lawyer or multiple lawyers you're going to have to go through this process might be simpler for some than others but you in general have to do these three steps you need to review your whips see what actually is due to be billed some print out the pre bills and mark them up some physically go into their tool I always recommend the latter because that just takes out an additional step for your ministry of staff make your edits and then of course finalize those bills for them to go out and then it comes to the invoice generation sending out those bills either individually or in a batch if you're doing like a regular billing cycle and then getting them delivered to your client you have a lot of options print email even sharing and we'll talk about how technology can influence those areas then it comes to payments so think of the different options you offer also many times it depends on the type of practice that you have as to what type of payments you receive sometimes it has to 100% be through the trust account so all your payments might be through retainer or you may get cash or cheque from your client now of course the law societies have their limitations as to how much cash you can receive but those situations can still come up the third option so the first two are fairly common I don't really need to I think discuss those because I'm sure you all experienced those payment options but the third is credit card and we'll talk a little bit about how credit cards really can improve your practice from a technology perspective because again that is a convenience to your client I always say when it comes to payment options you just want to be competitive with other law firms and you want to ensure you're not losing business off of the options you provide I know myself as a consumer if I go to a store or a restaurant and they say they're cash only or they don't receive credit cards or I've gone to places where there's a minimum for a credit card sometimes I just don't have cash many people don't even manage a checkbook today so to have that option available can actually affect the business that you receive then you need to focus on collections so once you've actually billed you need to know who owes what since when now this is essential because you've already been taxed on these billed items you know whether it was just recently could have been a quarter ago a year ago at some point whenever you build your clients you're being taxed on that as income so you want to have a really tight grasp on what is owed and try to cut down that AR as much as possible so the first like I said knowing what who owes what since when very often that is most complicated piece of just getting a list of names and what they owe and how long it's been overdue and can anything be waived or any changes be made you also want to avoid retainer depletion having a depleted retainer is the same as having an unpaid invoice in terms of your gonna have to chase your clients now of course you're not being taxed on any of that but if you are billing a client I think in the most case most law firms try not to bill if they don't have the funds available but you want to ensure what's usually recommended is what's called evergreen retainers so if you have let's say a client that started out with a $10,000 retainer and you know based on the burn rate that it'll be depleted at some point maybe when it gets down to a thousand you want to reach out and get that replenished because that will cut down on the amount of chasing you need to do to fill that retainer down the line and of course having notification and follow-up methods in place it's one thing to know who's low on retainers or who has a high receivable balances that's one thing it's another thing to have a streamlined process to notify your clients that doesn't take a lot of time for the firm but also is effective for your clients that actually respond and follow up with an action so how do we improve on all of this so we talked about the general workflow you might have been able to take some notes on just ways to improve your workflow overall and make sure certain things don't get skipped but now it's about being that 21st century law firm okay you have these tasks your firm does these tasks all the time are you doing in the best way possible so here are some suggestions where modern technology can really really take your game up another level so the first is mobile access for timely docketing as I mentioned best is to have your dockets in in the moment or end of day and when you're relying on waiting to be back in the office logging into your system getting it entered that is going to affect the likelihood if it being tracked so being able to pick up your smartphone or your tablet or your laptop wherever you are and building those habits for immediate entry will ensure that you're actually billing for the work that you do accurately so the time that's being spent the detail that's required will all be there 360-degree view so a lot of these tools provide everything together you know you can see your practice management so your events your tasks your notes your billing and sometimes even your accounting as well so being able to see everything in one area allows you to ensure everything gets billed for and eventually gets paid and I'll show you how that view can help not only from a billing perspective but also from a collection and payment perspective as well having an efficient bill review and generation process there's many billing tools out there that have efficiency built right in so if you're generating invoices one at a time if you're doing anything manually if you're reinventing the wheel any time you're sending out a bill think about utilizing your tool properly because you may have software or systems that have a lot of efficiency built in you're just not utilizing it so you want to educate yourself as to what's available and how to utilize it the best way for your firm modern delivery options so I'll give you some examples here I mean when people think delivery first thing they think of is mail or email but there's even further options like connecting through a client portal sharing through there as well that is a very very I don't want to say common because it's still a newer concept for law firms but it is definitely a buzzword it is something that is very attractive to many law firms because in addition to being convenient to being a nice cool modern function for your clients it's secure it's encrypted so you want to be mindful as to how much you're sharing through email of course things that are not confidential it's fine but if you're sharing anything confidential you want to ensure like for instance retainer agreements or different contracts you want to ensure you're sharing that through an encrypted portal and then collection and replenishment reminders so like I said half the battle is figuring out who owes what since when or who's low on their retainer so utilize the tools that you have all that data is there but is there a way to say hey I need to know how many invoices are overdue and who therefore is there an easy way to do that or I need to know who's at a certain retainer level and I need to notify them like I said first is understanding who what since when and then also the notification and then lastly is fully integrated payment options of course recording any sort of payment on an invoice is fairly standard but think about those modern options like credit cards and also if you're handling a lot through the trust account think about how your billing interacts with your accounting trust accounting is one of those areas that crosses both the billing and the accounting you may have those functions separate you may have those together so you want to ensure that workflow is is handled properly and my last point is to choose your cloud alternative wisely so if you're seeing all this and you're thinking wow you know what I really would love to move to the cloud space understand that it's very different than the legacy market in the legacy market there's many tools that are all in one billing and accounting maybe not practice management depending on the tool that you're using but that's very common practice in cloud there's actually a very different set up most cloud tools in the legal space go the route of billing and practice management in the system and then integrating with things like QuickBooks or 0 or something else for accounting I'm not just something to keep in mind because those tools are generic you're gonna have to figure out how to maintain trust compliance how to do your you know CRA compliance as well through those tools also like I said they're not legal specific so just some things to keep in mind when looking towards cloud that there are different options available now I'm gonna take a little bit of time to give a visual on what we discussed today so like I said we focused on billing cosmolex as I mentioned is a cloud-based legal practice management tool we cover all the above so usually billing accounting trust accounting and also documents events so on and so forth so all legal specific you're welcome to take a look if you'd like but for now I'm going to be focusing on the billing workflow and just showing you what's possible in a cloud application you may just now start looking at the cloud market maybe you're not yet familiar with it so this gives you a little bit of an idea so let me go ahead and switch into Lexx right now I'm on my matter screen so these are all of my files my case files you could see they're all listed here and I'm easily able to notate the balances for each one of them so if I for instance highlight Jim you'll see the client is Jim fields it's a divorce matter I have a file number the matter owner and then balances so what's owed that unpaid balance and this is actually green because I have money and Trust which is this last column your unbuild balance those are your whips anything really do for the next billing and as I said trust funds Alyssa's here as well so all that's available on the same page now when we talk about billing I did mention docketing and how you want to make sure that's really easy and convenient as possible so of course if you're in your cosmic software if you're sitting at your desk or on a tablet you can go ahead and enter your time like you normally would you can enter a single time card which we have here you can run a timer at the very top up here I can start a timer go about my work I can even enter which file it's for and continue throughout the application there's also a timesheet one thing I noticed with docketing especially is if you have multiple lawyers in the firm sometimes each lawyer has their preference some like to work in a timesheet get everything listed and at lunch time or at the end of the day post it some like to do individually some like to utilize timers for everything so having that flexibility just ensures that each lawyer has the most efficient method for them so here's that timesheet so I can manage as many entries as I need to post them all in a batch if I want and this function the timesheet the timers your regular timecard of course are all available in the mobile app as well so maybe not every lawyer is used to using a mobile app but you might have a few that say you know what I do everything on my phone can I do that absolutely another thing in regards to your disbursements so time of course you need to be able to enter on your own but when you have expenses and disbursements that you're paying out pocket and you want to ensure that those get bill to the client that's when there's a transaction part you can like we have here hard cost so you can enter a transaction let's say you have a $100 filing fee you can enter that here you can print your check you can post it to the matter and ensure it gets billed but even better is maybe you have a business credit card and at the end of the month you want to ensure that everything that happened on that credit card which could be firm expenses but can also be these disbursements for your clients gets captured so one way to really help with your docketing is to ensure that you can import transactions that's another modern function so if I go here and accounting you'll see I have a Visa credit card here in which I can go within and I can say import transactions you can get this from your credit card bank upload it say which account it's for both from a general ledger account but also could be posted to a client file so it can actually get billed so there's ways even from the transaction side of things to ensure all of your dockets are handled all right going back to matters so we covered our docketing I also want to show you what actually is kind of connected to that is that 360-degree view I mentioned so if I go with in Jim's matter you want everything together now the reason why this is beneficial is there's a lot of billable activities events tasks notes a lot of things go on a day to day basis that eventually need to get billed so when I add a particular let's say event I'll go to the calendar here and I'll add an event so I could say that I have a meeting and it's already says it's for Jim because I'm in his file but then we have this billing status I could say it's billable cuz this week I mean this event may be weeks from now maybe it's in mid-october how do I ensure that that will actually get billed so if I mark this as billable and I say it is in October when that event happens and I do not bill for it it's gonna show up on my dashboard remind me so we have this area called money finder let me just shoot over to the dashboard real quick that's right here so this screen is telling me all of the events or tasks or notes that I marked as billable and never made a docket entry for so yet one other way to say hey you know what you had this event and you forgot to build for it go ahead and do so you may look at this and say no that never happened I forgot to cancel it or no that event definitely took place let me go ahead and enter a docket for it so any effort possible to not only be convenient for you but ensure everything gets built your client because after all you're doing that work you want to ensure you actually get paid for it now let's talk about we handle docketing from many different angles let's talk about when you're actually generating those invoices there is a lot of fishin si tools available and this is available in many different billing applications so if I go over here to invoices and you want to generate in a batch if you're doing any sort of regular billing cycle you want the ability to do so so if I click create it's gonna tell me everybody who has a balance so I have four matters that have an unbuilt balance which I can generate for I can filter I can maybe generate just for one lawyer or for one client or only people who have a balance higher than a certain amount you can filter however you need to and then generate those items in a batch now when it comes to editing we do have this little lock that when it is unlocked you can go ahead and make edits we also have this function called change write-off which is very helpful because of course once you bill it once you generate an invoice it's effectively income so if you need to make changes we have this write-off function where you can change fee HST costs discount overhead you pick and choose what the change is could be positive or could be plus or minus and then that will effectively make the change on the date that you decide or write off the full balance allows you to make those changes after the fact you then would finalize your bills so we do have a finalized function here where you can take a couple or a whole batch and lock them for edits and make sure they can't be changed and then of course it's delivering to your client so I talked about how there's a lot of modern options available for this so first is of course mail some of you still mail your invoices I do suggest using that as an additional delivery method and not your only delivery method because it's always good to reinforce with other channels so first of course you can print but then we have email now emailing is in a batch which is very helpful so I can select a handful of whoever I have an address for right here and the key is these templates templates are your friend if you can have a message that populates for each person individually but you're only doing one action that's a huge time-saver but also makes your messaging consistent across all of your clients so I can send you send this to my three clients all at the same time and will populate the necessary information and the other option is to share in a client portal so what a client portal is I mentioned it a little bit before it is a website that you can invite your clients to and share items with them one of which is invoices but it could also be documents events notes and other things as well you choose what you want to share so for Jim I have a portal so let me go ahead and show you what that looks like I am logged in as Jim so I am your client I logged into my portal I could see I have some pending invoices here some some tasks that are going on no events right now and I have these items in the sidebar okay so I have my invoices listed here and I can go to let's say invoices tells me what's paid and what's not I can download view but hey so we have an integration with la Paix in which not only can you share your invoices with your client but they can select an item click pay and pay directly online put in their credit card information now not only do you get that payment in your bank account but la pay also communicates back into cosmolex puts in the payment updates the invoice and all of your income entries are made as well so really not only simplifies that whole workflow and automates it but it increases the accuracy because you're not doing double entry for these types of functions alright so this on the left of course is all the different items you can share if you choose to you do have your other payment options taking money from trusts of course as I mentioned if taking from trusts you want to ensure you have a good understanding as to how whatever billing tool you use communicates with the accounting if you're looking at a cloud tool that works with QuickBooks then you're managing your retainers in two places so you just want to be well aware of what is in each tool how they communicate back if back and forth if at all and how that may help or hinder your workflow I'm the last piece of the collection so you sent down an invoice you receive some payments but not for all and that to automate use your system to be your collections Asian so if I go to invoice reminders here the system is telling me who owes what since when like I said that's the number one question so I can see that Janice Smith on her adoption matter has an overdue balance of 143 72 and it was due back in May so I'm quite delayed or she's quite delayed on that and I can pick and choose who I want to notify and yet again you can email a template which will populate for each person letting them know that a balance is due you can use very similar tools for retainers so if you want to keep track of I'll go back to my matter page here what each person has a retainer and set a minimum you can do that on each file you can say you know what for Jim's case I don't want us retainer to get to below 8,000 so you can set that up and then remind them either through an automated email just like what I showed you or it could tack on their invoice as well so just some examples as to how as I said modern technology can really take your billing to the next level alrighty we have a great giveaway for today's webinar a free copy of law firm accounting demystified co-authored by cosmic CEO Rick Cobra this is a great guide for proper law firm accounting we want to thank everyone for attending today's cosmos webinar series presentation we hope that it was educational for you and your law practice this is a serious as Erica mentioned at the beginning of the webinar we are at part two here modern legal billing on coming up on the 26th is compliant trust accounting so please join us for that webinar