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Traveling format billing for Legal

hi I'm Brett Sanctus founding partner of Sanka slaw a business transactional law firm based in Austin Texas today we're gonna talk about billing and this is for new lawyers and I'm thinking about this because I hired recently and associate he's asking about billing we're talking about I'm realizing that no one taught me how to build back in the day now I worked for a very very large law firm so well everyone's all gotten harder and there's more scrutiny on everything and more junior associate time being written off but back then maybe the clients just paid the bills I don't know or maybe they were just sanitized by partners but we were never taught how to do that so maybe it didn't matter much there's part of me that wonders if you know some of the things I'm gonna tell you today sound a little bit calculated or disingenuous I don't think they are at all but maybe there's some sensitivity to saying some of these things for example one of the things that you need to be very careful of is how many of your entries end in point zero most bill in six second increments which means every six minutes is one tenth of an hour so you've got point one point two point three point four be careful of how many point zero entries you have four point zero hours that sticks out to clients like a sore thumb it if they think you didn't really calculate the time carefully now if you do the math just randomly ten percent of your entries ought to be point zero but be very careful of having ten percent of your entries be point zero because clients look at and just think oh they didn't calculate it right it's just what goes through someone's head so I'm not suggesting you you know you lie what I do is I just round it down a little bit right I have a lot more point 9s than point zeros and it's not meant to be misleading it's the opposite I mean I am calculating the time but you have to be a little bit careful just how it looks right and so we're going to talk about that kind of thing and I think any of this thing is wrong but there's bytes P sensitivity to talking about it's just so candidly 0.5 also is a little bit of an issue but it's less of one so just generally speaking and this is true in life generally I think there's more credibility to odd numbers and some hey yeah that cost me $2,000 it feels like someone rounded and probably up in their favor right so be careful of that number your bill should be very detailed as detailed as possible now there's something called task-based billing and what that is rather than that at the end of the day have one big lump sum 6.4 hours phone call the so-and-so researched such-and-such issue analyzed memo you know all those things grouped together you break them out into individual tasks so instead of having one entry per client for a day you may have two you may have four you may have ten if you have ten individual tasks now I'm not a big task biller I think it's valuable when I was a general counsel I required it if my clients don't require it we do a lot of project fee as well I think it's much tougher to keep time that way but there's value in it no question and depend on who your clients are and how you bill you really should consider it if you project bill by the day like I tend to do you still should have a lot of detail about the tasks don't ever say worked on such-and-such matter but worked on merger right you want to say analyzed merger agreements reviewed first portion of merger agreement phone call with John Smith about such and such an issue give a lot of detail this kind of should go without saying I think but sometimes we get busy as lawyers and we just think look I put in a ton of time you know and you know client should be that that's a good deal and that's fair and just kind of throw a big entry in there those bills get looked at as like you know what is this what was done right you're giving clients much more opportunity to question what you did for them so specificity when you task bill or not give a lot of specificity I'll be careful when you say if you only have one entry for the day and it's email to client in its 30 minutes you're gonna have a problem on your hands now a lot of emails I write take 30 minutes they take 45 minutes we noodle over the words were judged on the words we have to communicate well if we have spelling errors some of our clients think we're lazy and we don't do our job well that stuff gets stressed and that turns into 30 minute emails but it's really tough for a client to see that think that makes any sense they think what do you mean like it takes me 2 minutes to send an email well maybe it does you know you're not being judged the way we are or you don't have the level of the the need to communicate something so carefully so it's understood or to be careful about how will this be viewed in the rearview mirror so be careful things like that just put yourself at the clients head so in that case I would find other things that day that I would do other things that day or I would talk about I might say instead of emailed client I might say prepared email or researched issue and prepared email about or you know something else that gives a little bit more to go on again it's not about miss leaving a client it's about making sure they you don't serve up the wrong impression by what you do by just being too quick or simple because a lot more went into your email what you should be saying is agonized for 30 minutes to get the email perfectly so the clients will understood exactly what we needed to say and so the record was clear but you can't say all that stuff right so figure out other ways to say those kind of things bill every single day as an early a junior lawyer I made the mistake sometimes of waiting a week or something and then you're going back through what inevitably you end up doing I always always cut my own bills because I think you know I don't know I just can't I know I was in the office for 14 hours that day I know I was working on this and that and the other thing but I didn't keep perfect records right and you should use a timer and keep great records and that sort of goes without saying but sometimes we just don't or sometimes you get busy and if you turn around a week later and try and rebuild it what you're gonna end up doing is number one your billing is gonna be less accurate and you're probably gonna end up cutting your own invoices right and if you're gonna cut an invoice by the way what you want to do is bill full time and then show the deduction right so bill everything and then cut something for the client but don't go in cutting it because you weren't disciplined enough to bill every single day at this point of my career bill every single day and if I'm in my bed and I realize oh shoot I didn't build time like I'll shoot myself a text or something right just get the record down because it's so much harder you're gonna cheat yourself and you're gonna be less accurate product for the client last point about billing and there's many many other and if you've got questions you want more feedback about all this feel free to reach out and ask a question drop a comment or just reach out to me directly you can find me online I'm all over the place but you strong action verbs okay that just sounds better to say conferred with John Smith than to say talk to John Smith it's just a stronger word analyzed asset purchase agreement is better than read as a purchase agreement reviewed and revised is you know better than made some changes to just so think about the words you're using generally you should be using verbs and think about ability opportunities to talk about the benefit to clients so if you know anything about marketing you're you don't pitch features you don't sell features you sell benefits so the camera is that water-resistant to 100 meters right it is allows you to take pictures of kids at the pool that's sort of idea you know it's like one is a feature and most people don't think in terms of features engineers and analytical people you and I probably do because we're trained as lawyers were very logical but most people think in terms of benefits and I would say that even when you buy products you're probably more driven by benefits and emotions I would say that's the case so think about that and think about the point being like you're trying to tell them what were you doing for them not was just what was the task what was the benefit spoke to colleague spoke to fellow colleague lawyer John Smith to find ways to save client money on XYZ you know stuff like that right think in terms of benefits so there's some things to get you started some of which I don't think you're gonna hear on the job if you've got questions about that if you totally disagree feel free to reach out and tell me that if you like this want to hear more about these types of things please drop me a line thanks