Hourly billing is dying. We know that’s a fact. It’s widely discussed. A variety of alternative billing arrangements are being explored by lawyers and clients alike.
Jordan Furlong at Law21 says hourly billing “breeds inefficient, overworked lawyers and frustrated, resentful clients.” Furlong predicts the demise of lawyers and firms that can’t or won’t make the shift. He sees a great future for firms that adopt alternative billing arrangements, become more efficient and implement the technologies and tools that assist in making that happen.
Our firm has been doing fixed fee billing for as long as I can remember. Fixed fees encourage efficiency in ways that law firms aren’t usually focused on. Other industries have long been incentivized to become efficient and have developed excellent tools to assist them in completing profitable projects.
There are many products that will help you become more efficient. Many of them are overkill for small practices and are aimed at much larger entities.
Project Management tools, however, are well evolved and affordable. The single most important step you can take to increase efficiency is to plan your case from the beginning. For the same reason that we plan our route before embarking on a trip, planning a case before we start, makes it far more likely that we’ll end up at our chosen destination or achieve our desired outcome.
The old standby for project management is Project 2007. It’s part of some Microsoft Office packages You can download a 60 day trial if you don’t already have a copy. You can buy a copy for less than $200.
Another option, and I in the midst of trying this one out, is Tom’s Planner. It’s a hosted, online, project management package. You can create and share Gantt charts and plot out the course of your case. My limited experimentation has proven that Tom’s is much easier to use than the Microsoft product. Project 2007 has many more features, but I’m not sure I need them.
Tom’s has a free trial, for now, as they are in beta. This would be a great time to give project management a try without making an investment in software.
Ultimately, project management software will be an essential part of every case. There will be other tools employed to improve efficiency but these packages will be the foundation for changing the way we practice. You’ll see improvement right away. You win and your clients win as well.
Have you tried project management software in the past? If you try Tom’s or Project please post your experiences here. We’d all like to learn from your experiences.
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Lee Rosen has practiced family law for more than twenty years. With three offices, 