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Best Practices for Mobile TimekeepingWhen it comes to billing clients for their time, attorneys follow general guidelines for tracking and recording time spent on their activities. As law firms adopt wireless communication infrastructures, these guidelines extend to work completed outside of the office. Professionals look for a solution to track and record their mobile time that meets the needs of the on-the-go attorney. Accuracy Attorneys have an ethical duty to bill clients for only the time spent working on a particular case. All fees billed to a client should accurately reflect the time and expenses related to the matter. The bill should separate all tasks involved and identify the date, the attorney involved, the billing rate, a description of the task, and the total time spent. Time entries for correspondence should identify the names of both sender and recipient, as well as the subject matter. To reduce the effort of recording separate time entries for each task performed, attorneys sometimes use the "blocked billing" method where several tasks are grouped together into a single time entry. In his Missouri Bar article "Good Timekeeping Practices," John Trunko contends that: The use of block billing obscures the actual time spent on each task contained within such an entry. Block billing is a practice that has frequently been criticized by the courts in fee cases, and is generally prohibited by sophisticated consumers of legal services. Each task performed on a case and the time associated with it should be described separately... In order for the mobile attorney to comply with these guidelines, a system for tracking time spent away from the office must be developed and implemented firm-wide. No Double Billing Unlike manufacturing or retail, service industries have the ability to charge two different customers for the same item - time. More specifically, they are able to bill their travel time to a client's site and also bill the time spent on the phone with another client while in transit. Is this ethical? The debate still continues, but what is certain is that the time spent with each must be recorded. Otherwise you are either hurting your firm (by not billing) or hurting your client (by charging them for time spent working with someone else). In the Courtroom Federal courts have banned all cell phones in the courtroom - what's an attorney to do? By using a data-only device such as a BlackBerry, attorneys can remain in contact with the rest of the world. However, this power requires responsibility - do not become a distraction to others. While time spent working on a case should be recorded, in these instances it must be done in an inconspicuous manner. Excessive typing distracts others and is unprofessional. Ease of Use A professional using a mobile device is readily available when away from the office. The mobile user may be in a car, meeting, restaurant, or any other venue where out-of-office activities occur. For this reason, a time tracking system that is simple to use, subtle, and requires minimal involvement is essential. The Solution Several options exist for mobile time entry. As of this writing, only AIRTIME is event driven, hooking in to each call or email and submitting captured events in real-time back to the firm's internal systems. No manual time entry is required. AIRTIME was developed with ease-of-use and best practices in mind. As an attorney, founder Jerry Fenzel realized the need for an application that meets all of these requirements and integrates with existing firm infrastructures. Innovative features ranging from time accumulation (summarizes time across multiple communications with the same contact) and zero-click time capture (beams time back to the attorney's diary without user-intervention) are attorney-driven and unique in the marketplace. Simplicity for the attorney, administration and IT staff has driven product development at AIRTIME. AIRTIME's secure web editor is a fully hosted backend, requiring no onsite software installation. Captured time and expenses are automatically fed to the firm's time entry and/or time and billing system as appropriate. A unique billing model requires no upfront investment: installation and integration is provided free of charge, and the A4P transaction fee can be passed through as a client-reimbursable expense, making A4P revenue-positive from day one. For more information concerning AIRTIME, please contact AIRTIME-Manager below.
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