Organizing the process by which attorneys log, account for, and then bill for their working time is no easy feat. As is the case in most professional situations, firm owners must straddle the delicate line between thoroughness and excess as they verify each and every billable service. This is why even the simplest originating attorney reports, which allow law firms to track which attorneys are bringing matters and payments in, are invaluable.
Standards Are Set
The standard originating attorney reports offered by most legal practice management software auto-generate once an attorney is assigned to a particular matter. Most software then track the amount of time billed by this attorney throughout the case. By tracking billable time, the software is able to calculate the amount of revenue brought in by an attorney. It’s a useful tool in law firm billing, and it certainly saves firm administrators plenty of billable hours’ worth of clerical work. It’s also not enough.
The issue with the generic originating attorney report in most other practice management software is that it fails to account for fees unrelated to time. That is, all of the flat expenses charged to a client by an attorney generate revenue for a law firm, but classic originating attorney reports do not provide a mechanism for tracking these fees or connecting them to the attorney responsible for them. This means that either attorneys are not being appropriately compensated, either in commission or recognition, for their flat expenses, or that firm administrators are wasting unnecessary amounts of time manually accounting for flat fee charges.
The New Normal
PracticePanther’s new flat fee billing feature effectively eliminates this issue. The software’s latest feature development not only allows attorneys to log flat fee charges on their matters – it allows these charges to be linked to individual attorneys in the same way as billable hours, and it populates the quantities onto originating attorney reports automatically. This effectively eliminates both commission discrepancies and the wasted time spent manually calculating flat fee charges for law firms everywhere.
Upgrade Your Firm’s Originating Attorney Reports
Comprehensive flat fee billing is not just an “add-on” feature; it is an integral part of a cohesive, intuitive, and sophisticated law practice management software. By making this feature accessible to its users, PracticePanther has made yet another stride in its quest to provide the most effective and lucrative automation solutions to law firms all over the world.
