Getting paid is crucial to the survival and success of any law firm, yet you’d be hard-pressed to find any small firm (or medium-sized to large firm, for that matter) that doesn’t struggle in some way with billing, payments, and collections. It doesn’t matter how many hours you work if you can’t collect on what you’re owed – which all too many firms find out the hard way.
Thankfully, there are ways to approach billing and use technology that can remove many of the roadblocks to better, faster billing. In a recent webinar, Bob Ambrogi, columnist for Above the Law and author of the LawSites legal blog, Jordan Turk, a practicing family lawyer and the law practice advisor for LawPay, and Haley Altman, Global Head of Corporate Development at Litera, help small firms sort out why this critical area poses so many problems and what can be done to improve the situation.
The webinar covers a wide range of topics that go into improving the overall billing experience, from fee structures to technology. Among the tips covered by the panel are:
- How to structure fees in ways that encourage collection at the highest level
- Why firms should be willing to come up with more creative ways to set up billing structures and find alternatives to the billable hour
- How your choice in billing structure can impact your ease in collections
- How to approach billing for unique entities like startups
- Why your fee arrangement should include your right to withdraw from the case
- Why evergreen retainers are an underutilized tool
- How clear budgeting and invoicing descriptions can improve collections
- Best practices around invoicing, including selecting due dates and following up on payment
- Incentives and penalties that can lead to more accurate time entry and more timely billing
- What technologies exist to address the various problems in firms’ current billing processes, including ClientCredit from LawPay, the industry’s first buy-now-pay-later solution
- Why it’s important to utilize billing tools tailored to lawyers
- Why making it easy for clients to pay results in faster payment
Listeners will get valuable advice on both how to collect as much as possible on aged accounts receivable now and how to prevent billing and payment delays from happening in the future.
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