Product3 min read
How Sixminute helps lawyers bill more hours for the same work
Sixminute helps lawyers recover overlooked billable time from work they have already completed, with suggested entries they review before billing.
A lawyer can spend the whole day working for clients and still finish with a timesheet that is incomplete.
Preparing a timesheet means accounting for the work completed on each matter, how long it took and what it involved. That becomes harder when a day includes drafting, meetings, client calls and email exchanges across several matters.
If time recording is left until later, the lawyer has to reconstruct those activities from memory. Shorter pieces of client work can be overlooked during that process, leaving billable work unrecorded.
Sixminute helps address this by turning computer events and phone logs into suggested time entries. Those entries give lawyers a record to review, helping them account for work that might otherwise be missing from their timesheets.
Why shorter activities can be harder to record
Drafting and scheduled meetings can occupy distinct blocks of time, which makes their duration easier to recall. Client calls and email exchanges often happen between other tasks, making it harder to remember exactly when each activity started and finished.
A lawyer may remember answering a client’s question but still need to establish which matter it concerned, how much time it took and how to describe the work. Doing that for several activities can involve checking sent emails, looking through call histories and piecing together the order of events.
That reconstruction takes effort, and it can still leave gaps. When an activity is missing from a timesheet, the firm may have no time entry available to include in its billing process.
How Sixminute turns computer events into suggested entries
Sixminute uses computer events and phone logs to prepare a suggested timesheet, with a matter, duration and description filled in for each entry.
The lawyer can then review those entries while checking their work for the day. A suggested entry associated with a client call can bring that conversation back into view, while an entry associated with an email exchange can help account for work between longer tasks.
With those activities available for review, the lawyer can check the suggested matters, durations and descriptions and make any necessary corrections. This gives the lawyer a starting point for preparing a complete timesheet and reduces how much they need to reconstruct from memory.
How reviewed entries reach the billing system
Reviewing a suggested timesheet also involves deciding which activities can be billed under the firm’s client arrangements. An internal discussion may need to be recorded as non-billable work, while a client-related activity may need an adjusted duration or a clearer description.
Sixminute keeps that decision with the lawyer. Once the lawyer has checked and approved their entries, Sixminute syncs them with the firm’s existing billing system.
More complete time capture can help additional hours reach billing because previously overlooked client work becomes available for review and approval. The amount recovered depends on how much billable work was being missed and which entries are ultimately included in an invoice.
Sixminute helps lawyers give their client work a more complete record, while keeping review and approval within their firm’s billing process.