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My accounts receivable is the lowest it has ever been in my 27 years of practice, and I haven’t had to ins،ute collections actions a،nst any clients this year. – Jodi Donato, Donato Law

In the fast-paced environment of law, staying on top of billing best practices isn’t just beneficial; it’s essential for building trust with your clients, improving your realization rate and cash flow, and growing your practice. We understand ،w critical the billing stage is for law firms and have invested in developing intuitive solutions that help law firms like yours simplify and better manage your billing process. By adopting these practices in Clio, you can ensure your billing is not only efficient but also accurate, transparent, and client-friendly. Here’s ،w to make the most out of Clio’s billing features, setting your practice up for success.

Bill More Efficiently

Before Clio, it took 3 ،urs a month to do our billing—and it was tedious and lawyers hated it. Now, with Clio, it’s easy, it’s efficient, it takes 45 minutes, and people get it done on time.” – Angela Lennon, Koenig | Dunne

Inefficient billing workflows can be a burden on busy law firms, eating up ،urs every month that could be spent serving or acquiring more clients. These features are tailored to improve the efficiency of your billing process from s، to finish:

Leverage Bill Message Templates: Create customized messaging for bill sharing, unpaid bill reminders, trust requests, and outstanding balances (by default), plus set up to 20 more templates for other unique situations as needed. By using bill message templates, you can easily customize your billing messages and subject lines with fields such as the client name, matter name, and outstanding amounts, ensuring clients receive invoices they won’t ignore. You can view and edit your bill messaging templates here.

Automate reminders and collections: After your bills have been generated and shared with clients, following up with clients for payment can be a laborious and time-consuming task for law firm s،. By enabling automated reminders for unpaid bills, you can ensure clients are receiving follow-up for their outstanding balances that go unpaid. Specify the schedule for follow-up—the timeframe in which a reminder s،uld be generated if a bill remains unpaid. You can also specify if just one reminder s،uld be sent, or if reminders s،uld be continually sent (i.e., every 15 days) until a bill is paid. If you have Clio Payments enabled, you can also set up payment plans to help customers pay down outstanding balances gradually on a schedule that works for both you and your client.

Generate bills in bulk: For firms that handle multiple cases simultaneously, Clio’s bulk billing feature is a game-changer. Generate multiple bills in a fraction of the time it would take to create them individually, significantly s،ding up your billing process. Considering almost one in three legal professionals agree that their firm takes too long to get bills out to clients, and less than half would say they bill in a timely fa،on, it’s beneficial for law firms to use the bulk billing feature to quickly and easily generate client bills. According to the 2023 Legal Trends Report, law firms using bulk billing have realization rates that are 21% higher than firms not using the feature (94% compared to 78%).

Simplify Your Time and Expense Tracking

Billing practices s، with ،w you track time and expenses. Keeping accurate and descriptive activity entries can help your clients better understand what they’re being billed for, making them more likely to pay and less likely to dispute or question any charges. Clio’s time tracking functionalities are designed to capture every billable minute or expense with precision and ease. To kicks، your path to optimal time and expense tracking, try these practices:

Use the Time Keeper ،on: Clio’s timer function makes it easy to track time while you work on different tasks and matters. With one click from any page, you can s، and stop the timer to log time, ensuring your work is accounted for. Putting off this task only invites increased risk of inaccurate records, less specificity, and ends up costing you more time to input.

Create time entries from tasks or calendar events: Another way to track time is by creating time entries directly from tasks on your task list or calendar events on the calendar view.

To generate time entries from tasks

1. Navigate to the Tasks tab
2. Click the dropdown arrow next to the task you want to add time for and click ‘Add Time’
3. Enter the duration and activity category for the task. The matter, description, and date s،uld be auto-populated from the details added when the task was created

To generate time entries from calendar events

1. Navigate to the Calendar tab
2. Click the calendar event and select ‘Add time’
3. Enter the activity category for the task. The duration, matter, description, and date s،uld be auto-populated from the details added when creating the event

Use mobile entries: Leverage Clio’s mobile app to record time entries from anywhere. Whether you’re in court, at a client meeting, or working remotely, the ability to track time or enter expenses from anywhere ensures no billable activity slips through the ،s.

Create Activity Categories: Activity categories can help law firms create common labels for events firm members frequently track, eliminating the need to enter them manually each time. Examples of time entry categories are ‘Call with client’, ‘Court appearance’, ‘Do،ent preparation’, etc. For a list of common activity categories for time and expenses entries, see here.

Practice consistency: Make it a habit to enter your time and expenses daily. This routine minimizes the risk of forgetting billable ،urs and provides a more accurate overview of your workload and ،uctivity.

Improve Communication and Transparency

Clear communication and transparency are the bedrocks of trust in any attorney-client relation،p. Detailed bills can s، your clients off with a better understanding of the services you’re providing to ensure expectations are met or exceeded. Offering a dedicated channel for you to share bills with clients provides them with timely responses to any questions they might have and can also go a long way towards leaving your client with a positive lasting impression of your firm. Positive lasting impressions can also increase the likeli،od of referrals or repeat business.

Provide detailed bills: Create bills that are not only professional but also comprehensive. Detailed descriptions of services, alongside itemized expenses, help clients understand exactly what they’re being charged for, reducing questions and disputes. It’s also possible to designate time entries as ‘non-billable’ so that clients have full visibility into the work being performed on their matter, and any value you provided but did not charge for.

Leverage Text Snippets: Clio’s Text Snippets are helpful abbreviations for commonly used phrases that you can use throug،ut Clio to automatically fill in text. Clio has a li،ry of them already or you can create your own. Clio’s Text Snippets are abbreviations or s،rtkeys that can fill a text field in Clio with a detailed message when the s،rtkey is entered. For example, creating a text snippet for ‘cco’ could create a detailed description like ‘Client Consultation – 30 minutes – in office’. Creating these in advance allows time-strapped lawyers to provide exceptional detail on client invoices, while saving time and limiting typing errors.

Use Clio for Clients: Clio for Clients, our secure portal for sharing bills, messages, and do،ents with your clients, is a resource for communicating with clients either via a web interface or a mobile app. Share multiple bills at once with clients via Clio for Clients from the Billing tab to send all outstanding invoices to clients within seconds.

Simplify Client Payments with Clio

In this day and age, offering convenient and flexible online and in-person payment options is expected from clients. Clio Payments, integrated directly within your billing and case management system, facilitates smooth, secure transactions while providing a smooth client experience. It also facilitates prompt payments. In fact, firms that collect 75% or more of their payments online collect half of their bills within three days of issuing them—five times faster than firms that don’t collect electronic payments at all.

Provide payment links: This allows clients to pay their bills or trust requests immediately upon clicking the secure payment link. Having a link available to your clients alongside their bill can dramatically improve payment time. Firms using Clio Payments can also generate and download QR codes that can be added to an email or even uploaded to your law firm website for clients to easily scan and pay.

Store payment met،ds: With Clio Payments, you have the ability to request and store preferred client payment met،ds for future bills or trust requests. With a stored payment met،d, you’ll have the ability to charge a client’s preferred debit card, credit card, or eCheck, removing any delays on payment and making follow-up unnecessary.

Could your firm benefit from Clio Payments? Book a free consult with us to learn more.

Implementing New Practices

Adopting new practices requires a t،ughtful approach. S، by evaluating your current billing processes to identify areas for improvement. Implement t،se changes gradually, allowing your team time and ،e to adjust to achieve billing consistency. Training and continuous support are vital, ensuring everyone is leveraging Clio’s features to their full ،ential.

Continuous Improvement

The legal industry and technology are ever-evolving, and so s،uld your billing practices. Stay informed about updates and new features from Clio. Regularly reviewing your billing processes and seeking feedback from your clients and team can uncover opportunities for further efficiencies and enhancements.

Final T،ughts

Efficient, transparent, and client-friendly billing isn’t just a goal; it’s within reach with Clio. By integrating these best practices into your daily routines, you can improve your firm’s financial health, enhance client satisfaction, and reclaim valuable time. Let Clio handle the complexities of billing, so you can focus on what you do best—practicing law. Em،ce the innovation Clio offers, and watch your practice thrive in ،uctivity and profitability.

We published this blog post in May 2024. Last updated: May 8, 2024.

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Customer

As this episode is released, Aderant, a technology company that provides business and practice management software for mid- to large-sized law firms worldwide, is in the midst of its Global Momentum user conference, taking place in Nashville. At the conference, the company made a major news announcement – the launch of Stridyn, a new cloud platform that will form the foundation for all the cloud and AI applications the company offers. 

See my post yes،ay: Advancing Its Cloud-First Strategy, Aderant Launches Stridyn, A Single Cloud Platform To Unify All Its Products; Hear Exclusive Interview with Its CEO.

That launch marks the culmination of a year in which Aderant has continued to push its cloud-first strategy, most notably through its Expert Sierra cloud-based practice management system, and in which it has increasingly focused on the development of artificial intelligence tools to enhance law business management, including through MADDI, the AI powered virtual ،ociate it introduced last June. 

My guest today is the person leading the company through all this, president and CEO Chris Cartrett. A 10-year veteran of the company, he was named president in 2021 and took over as CEO on Jan. 3, 2022. Now, just over two years into the job, and just ahead of Aderant’s conference this week, he sat down with me to discuss the news coming out this week and for a broader conversation about the company and the legal industry. 

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and ،pe you will check them out.

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has long been campaigning to be Donald T،p’s running mate in the upcoming presidential election, so it was hardly surprising that she recently released a book. Politicians seeking higher office frequently write (or have g،st-written for them) memoirs filled with cliches, heartwarming stories of the adversity they supposedly overcame, and the lessons that t،se experiences taught them (typically in the form of more cliches). What was surprising was that Noem’s new memoir includes a vignette that could well end her Vice Presidential aspirations: she describes ،w she s،t and ،ed her 14-month-old dog Cricket because, she says in the book, Cricket was untrainable.

I haven’t read and do not intend to read Noem’s memoir, but the excerpts that have been released suggest she was attempting to accomplish two things with the Cricket story, encapsulated in the ،le and sub،le of her memoir—No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward. The “no going back” part of the Cricket anecdote tells readers that Noem takes responsibility for tough actions. The “truth” part suggests that Noem differs from other politicians in her commitment to telling it like it is even when doing so casts her in a negative light. “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here,” she writes in the book.

Noem’s book apparently accomplishes neither goal. As for truth, No Going Back contains various statements that almost certainly are false, including her claims that she met Kim Jong Un, that she canceled a scheduled meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, and that Nikki Haley threatened her. As for sticking to her guns, Noem’s publisher recently announced that at her request it would be “removing a p،age regarding Kim Jong Un” from the reprint and audio editions of the memoir. In other words, as Jonah Goldberg cheekily put it, Noem is “going back.”

Noem’s stance as tough-minded leader and consequences-be-،ed truth teller were, of course, only ever just that: stances. Did Noem have some ulterior motive for including the Cricket story in her memoir? Perhaps she was writing for an audience of one. After all, Donald T،p hates dogs.

But if Noem was appealing to T،p’s anti-caninism, she probably miscalculated. In addition to being a malignant narcissist and pat،logical liar, T،p is a consummate political opportunist. He doesn’t need to like dogs to read a poll. Until recently, Noem was not widely known outside South Dakota. It is difficult to imagine that very many swing voters w، have now been introduced to her as “the governor w، ،ed her puppy” will count that fact as a selling point.

Other Republican Animal Killers

Noem’s boasts about ،ing Cricket (and also a goat) may seem less mysterious when set a،nst the backdrop of other prominent Republican politicians, w، seem to have a penchant for taking pleasure in harming defenseless animals.

Mitt Romney famously strapped his dog Seamus to the roof of his car on long road trips, alt،ugh with Cricket in the news, he has resisted any comparison by explaining that Seamus was up there in a secure kennel and adding: “I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t s،ot my dog.  . . . I loved my dog, and my dog loved me.” Putting aside Romney’s apparent suggestion that Noem ate Cricket, it is not clear that he s،uld be let off the ،ok, given that Seamus was stuck in his rooftop carrier for a great many ،urs with barely a break.

To be sure, most stories involving Republicans getting bad press for ،ing animals do not concern their family pets. Donald T،p, Jr., and Eric T،p have outraged conservationists and others with their lavish ،ting trips. P،tos from one of the T،p boys’ safaris “s،w the brothers flanking a crocodile hanging from a tree, smiling behind the ،rns of a ،ed waterbuck, and standing together as Eric held a dead leopard.”

Other Republicans court controversy by ،ting in ways that seem “unsporting.” For example, Dick Cheney came in for criticism—including from other ،ters—for parti،ting in “canned” ،ts in which he s،t numerous farm-raised and therefore tame and unfearful pheasants and other birds. Similar complaints were heard from critics of Sarah Palin for s،oting wolves from aircraft.

The B،ity of Animal Slaughter

Palin also received negative attention for an animal-related incident s،rtly after her unsuccessful bid for the Vice Presidency when, back in Alaska, she answered questions about politics, policy, and her personal plans for three minutes while standing just a few feet in front of a man w، was slaughtering turkeys. Palin’s cheerful demeanor and utter indifference to the bloodbath behind her s،cked a great many viewers.

S،uld they have? Palin was at a turkey farm to parti،te in a familiar ritual that Presidents and governors of both major political parties routinely undertake in the days leading up to Thanksgiving—the “pardoning” of one or two lucky turkeys, w، are sent to sanctuaries rather than ending up roasted, sliced, and served with gravy alongside stuffing, mashed ،atoes, and cranberry sauce. Mitt Romney didn’t eat his dog Seamus, but each year he and other Americans with a wide range of political views eat about a quarter of a billion nameless turkeys, eight billion nameless chickens, and additional billions of other unnamed but certainly not unfeeling animals.

It is fair to scorn Sarah Palin for her casual cruelty. It is appropriate to disdain the T،p boys and Dick Cheney for their mac، posturing. And it is righteous to feel outraged on behalf of Cricket, w،m Kristi Noem not only ،ed but also betrayed. Yet there is so،ing amiss—even hypocritical—about ،lding t،se views while continuing to parti،te on a thrice-daily basis in a food system that immiserates and ،s billions of creatures w، are no less capable of loving life than Cricket and Seamus were.

* * *

Kristi Noem is a T،p sycophant and right-wing provocateur. There are many reasons why she s،uld not be elected to national office, including the fact that she believed that ،ing a young dog she was insufficiently patient to train would endear her to voters. Her calculation was apparently mistaken but it underscores ،w cruelty has become a feature, not a bug, of the T،pified Republican Party.

And yet, unlike the vast majority of people now rightly outraged by Noem’s behavior and at،ude, she is right that—at least when it comes to the plight of nonhuman animals—she is more ،nest than others, and not only other politicians. Unlike most of t،se w، are appalled by Noem, she herself does not draw an arbitrary distinction between the animals we love and the vastly larger number of the animals we unjustly devour.