Law Office Management Insight: New Report Shows That Firms Miss Out On 6 Billable Hours Every Day

In 2016, the Clio company released a rather shocking legal trends report, which revealed that the average law firm was missing out on approximately 6 hours of billable time each day. Last month Clio followed up their surprising findings, with a new legal trends report, and unfortunately for attorneys, things have not gotten much better over the past year.

“As with last year, law firms have the most potential for improvement in their utilization rates, which averaged 29% for 2016, up only slightly from 28% the previous year. For lawyers working an 8-hour day, this amounts to just 2.3 hours of billable time.” Clio 2017 Legal Trends Report

According to the report, which was assembled by surveying 2,915 legal professionals, law offices are still struggling to best utilize their time each day. While it is not realistic to expect firms to be able to devote all of their work day to billable tasks, the numbers presented in this report come across as alarming low. Law firms cannot be expected to grow if nearly three-fourths of their day is being devoted to work that won’t increase their bottom line. So what can attorneys do to get their work days back on track? Before we answer that, let’s take a closer look at the Clio 2017 Legal Trends Report to see what is taking up so much of firms’ time.

Why Firms Are Missing Out On So Many Billable Hours

At law offices, particularly smaller-sized ones, attorneys will end up wearing a lot of different hats during any given work day. Those running a firm will often have to pitch in with answering phones, take time to handle financials, and complete basic office duties that are necessary to keep a firm up and running.

According to the study, administrative tasks like the ones described above, are responsible for consuming 48% of the attorney’s time that could instead be spent on billable work. Here is Clio’s breakdown of how the 48% of time is broken up.

16 percent- Office administration

15 percent- Generating and sending bills

11 percent- Configuring technology

6 percent- Collections

Thanks to Clio’s research, law offices now have a better understanding of the work that is eating away at their day. But, unfortunately office administration work and handling bills are not tasks that can just be tossed to the side. These are things that must get done each day for a law office to survive. Hiring more employees to handle administrative tasks is of course the obvious solution to this problem, but it is often not a feasible one. So how else can attorneys go about decreasing their administrative workload, so that they can get back to working on their client’s cases?

How To Best Handle Administrative Tasks

To best tackle those pesky administrative tasks, and do so without going over budget, we recommend law firms invest in two extremely helpful resources.

When it comes to managing documents and handling billing issues, the company responsible for the legal trends study is actually one of the best places to turn to. Clio helps attorneys create and organize documents faster, and will keep those documents safe and secure in the cloud. The software can also streamline your billing processes and help attorneys create great looking custom invoices that fit their firm's individual needs. Clio even will let attorneys record the amount of time they spend on each case, making it easier for them to keep track of billable hours. All of these services are available for an affordable cost too.

Related: Learn the software programs law offices need to be using to maximize productivity.

A legal answering service can compliment a software program like Clio very well. Top quality legal answering services make it much simpler for attorneys to gather information from new and existing clients, as they offer a team of trained legal receptionists available 24/7 to handle client calls at a reasonable price. Law firms can always count on the client information gathered from a virtual receptionist to be accurate and detailed. Once client information is successfully gathered, a program like Clio will help keep it all organized. From the first phone call to the final payment, the process of handling a client will never run smoother than when having these two services are at work.

Interruptions Kill Productivity

If you’ve worked in a law office, you’ve probably experienced days where it feels like it is nearly impossible to get into a proper work flow. Just when you’re really getting going on a billable case related task, you get a phone call that brings your efforts to a screeching halt. According to Clio’s new report, this may happen to attorneys more than they realize.

“Our survey data shows that 25% of legal professionals are interrupted more than 10 times per day, and 30% are interrupted between 6 and 10 times per day.”
-Clio 2017 Legal Trends Report

Clio’s research also shows that resuming work after being interrupted by an unrelated task can take an average of 23 minutes! It’s starting to become pretty clear how firms are missing out on those six billable hours each day.

So what can cause extended interruptions for an attorney during the day:

• Having to deal with frequent calls from existing clients
• Having to perform legal intake on new clients
• Having to get on the phone to schedule appointments and answer simple questions

The truth is that a large number of an attorney’s incoming calls will be regarding matters that are far from urgent, and can be handled by a trained legal receptionist. A legal answering service can help keep an attorney’s daily interruptions to a limit, by offering trained legal receptionists to efficiently handle those kind of calls for them. Attorneys can of course still handle any of the incoming calls that they have time for, but when there is a lot of billable work that needs to get done, they can let their answering service team team take messages and perform intake on new clients for them.

Related: Learn how a quality message taking service can help keep law firms on track.

Final Thoughts

The results of this Clio Legal Trends Report show that it can be quite easy for attorneys to let large portions of the day get away from them. Unfortunately, just working harder will not keep this from happening. Attorneys need to be intelligent about the way they manage their time at the office in order to run a successful practice. Getting practice management help from a top rated software program like Clio and a trustworthy legal answering service are two of the smartest calls a law office can make. With administrative tasks being handled more efficiently than ever before, and daily interruptions being put to a minimum, attorneys can get back to using their work days for actual attorney work.

Here’s hoping that a deeper understanding of the attorney’s work day, leads to a more promising legal trends report in 2017.