Carole Poster

The legal invoice process can be a headache for many law firms. From managing different accounts and payment deadlines to ensuring the time tracking is accurate and the invoice reflects different fee structures, it is difficult to imagine a frictionless version of this workflow. Thankfully, automated legal billing software has made this process seamless for all-sized law firms.

This blog post will further explain how to create a custom legal invoice template and the benefits for your firm. 

How Do Lawyers Track Their Time?

The ways legal professionals track the time spent on a case have evolved over the years. Traditional practices included: 

• Filling tasks and time entries directly in their calendar;
• Cross-checking the time-stamp of a sent email; 
• Monitoring the time spent working on a document; 
• Tracking the history of phone calls; 
• Excel sheets listing their daily activities; 
• Or simply writing down by memory how they spent their time throughout the day or week. 

Though traditional, these strategies have hidden flaws. Besides being inefficient and time-consuming, the human aspect leaves room for error. Today, there are several legal billing software, such as Bill4Time, with time tracking features and additional functionalities that have widespread benefits for firms.  

By using a legal time tracking software like Bill4Time, a lawyer’s hourly rate can be broken down into specific billable slots that can be easily justified on behalf of the client. Automated time tracking also saves time trying to record hours and allows for greater accuracy as a few minutes of responding to an email can be easily captured. 

When Does a Lawyer Bill for Their Services?

Lawyers will generally invoice a client once a month during representation or when their representation is complete. This can vary based on the practice area and the nature of the service. 

For example, in matters involving litigation, attorneys might bill for services at specific stages, such as after the initial pleadings, following major motions, or at the conclusion of a trial. Each of these stages represents a significant amount of work, and billing at these intervals helps manage the financial expectations of both the lawyer and the client.

Some attorneys may offer alternative billing arrangements to meet client needs. These can include flat fees for particular services, retainer agreements for ongoing matters, or contingency fees, where the lawyer’s payment is a percentage of the client’s winnings in a case.

Communicating the billing timeline and policy to a client upfront is essential to mitigating common billing mistakes and unhappy clients. Plus, no one likes receiving an unexpected hefty bill. 

How To Create a Custom Legal Invoice Template

Law firms have unique yet complex billing needs. To address this reality, legal invoicing software has emerged across the market. These resources are an indispensable piece of any firm’s tech stack as they address the complex nature of legal billing. 

Bill4Time comes equipped with features to manage all aspects of the invoicing process. The platform allows you to create custom invoice templates that can be stored for repeated use. 

Invoice templates reduce administrative work as your details, hourly rates, client information, and payment method are included in the invoice. You can also customize the invoice templates to your firm’s brand. Lastly, they can also be used to automate recurring invoices, all while keeping the process professional and organized.  

What Is Included in a Legal Invoice Template?

There are a few common items that are always included in a legal invoice template:

• Contact information: Both the law firm and the client’s contact information should be clearly listed in the heading of the invoice. This includes the company name, their point of contact’s first name and last name, a phone number, an email, and an address. 
• Send date: The date on which the invoice was created and sent should be indicated for accounting purposes, but also to keep in account the payment terms. For example, if the payment is due 30 days after receiving the invoice, the date indication will help better identify the deadline.
• Payment terms: The conditions and expectations around the payment should be identified on the invoice. 
• Hours billed: The total sum owed should be broken down to include the number of hours billed for the services provided. 
• Line items with the service date and associated cost: Details on the services provided should be indicated to provide clarity. 
• Subtotal: The invoice should include the total sum of the different services and taxes if applicable.  
• Due date: To ensure the payment is received within a reasonable delay, the due date should be indicated on the invoice. 

Best Practices for Sending a Legal Invoice

Having a client-focused approach to your firm’s practice applies across all client interactions. From their initial intake to the payment, having a good reputation and repeated business requires clients to feel understood and appreciated throughout their interactions. A pleasant invoicing experience can be an opportunity to distinguish yourself from competitors.  

Before sending an invoice, ask your client who the invoice should be made out to and if they have a preferred payment method — does the client prefer receiving an invoice via email or instead going through the client portal? Do they want to pay by credit card online or by check? These are all factors to consider before sending the invoice. 

How To Get Clients To Pay Their Legal Invoice

Running after a client for an unpaid invoice is never enjoyable. Below are some actionable steps to help mitigate the likelihood of late or unpaid invoices. 

1. Clearly Communicate Your Billing Policy

The initial client intake consultation is the perfect opportunity to clearly communicate expectations around billing and payments. This information should be provided transparently during the first meeting and written in the onboarding documents. 

2. Invoice Your Clients On-Time

The best way to consistently send invoices on time is to set automated reminders. Creating a system of reminders where clients receive their monthly statements three to four days after the beginning of the month can help increase the likelihood of timely payments. Most people set their payroll toward the start of the month, meaning your client invoice would be paid after processing employee payroll. Moreover, having a set schedule crystallizes expectations and minimizes the time between completing and billing for the work. 

3. Offer an Online Payments Option

Every invoice should be clear, concise, and have a simple payment system. To avoid the time-consuming practice of processing paper checks, offer an online payment option to your clients. Through Bill4Time’s built-in payment processor, Bill4Time Payments, you can accept and process online payments right within the platform. You can also create custom payment links to add to your website or even your emails. 

Simply adding this in-demand payment method can get your law firm paid 70% faster than average billing practices. 

Tracking Your Legal Billing and Invoicing

By using automated legal billing software, you get access to comprehensive reporting to view your firm’s financial performance. Data within this dashboard includes accounting activity, the historical activity of accounts, expenses, month-by-month productivity, and user activity. 

With Bill4Time’s exclusive reporting, the types of expenses and time reports can include: 

• Account Activity Report: A general accounting report that reflects payments made from the Trust account to the operating account.
• Account Balance Report: An accounting report with the balance due for each matter.
• Billable Utilization Report: A report outlining targets vs. what was actually billed.
• Client List Report: A report showing various client details. 
• Collections Report: A payments report showing the amount collected for each invoice. 
• Inactivity Report: A report showing how long since a matter has been worked on.
• Invoice A/R Aging Report: A standard accounts receivable aging report. 
• Invoice Email Report: A history of invoices report. 
• Invoice Status Report: A report listing the payments that need to be applied to invoices. 
• Realization Report: A report of the amount billed/finalized divided by the total hours. 
• Resource Utilization Report: A report with the Performance Targets in the User Profile vs. Labor Hours.

By identifying and viewing this data, you can identify trends to achieve success and get insight into the forecasted revenue.

Implement a Custom Legal Invoice Template Process 

With minimal upfront work, your law firm can create a legal billing and invoice process that saves you time and money down the road. Bill4Time offers all of the features your firm needs to eliminate time-tracking errors, streamline your billing, automate your invoices, and process online payments. 

If you’re ready to optimize your firm’s time tracking and legal billing process, you can schedule a demo of Bill4Time or start a free trial to see the multiple timers or online payments functionality in action. 

Legal services can be expensive, leaving some clients unable to afford the legal help they need. Unbundled services are a popular option that helps clients pay for legal services “a la carte” at a lower overall cost.

Continue reading to understand what unbundled legal services are, how they benefit law firms and clients, and how you can get started with the help of legal practice management software.

What Are Unbundled Legal Services?

Unbundled legal services, also known as limited-scope representation, are a method of legal representation that specifies which aspects of the case the attorney assists with. Essentially, the client is hiring a lawyer to handle only parts of the case to reduce the costs.

These services may include preparing legal documents, filing court documents, or appearing in court on the client’s behalf. Clients are responsible for other aspects of their own cases.

Unbundled vs. Bundled Legal Services

Unbundled legal services allow clients to pay only for certain services they want a lawyer to complete, but the client handles various aspects of their case on their own. The specifics of how the legal tasks are allocated are outlined in a limited-scope representation agreement between the lawyer and client.

Bundled legal services, or limited retainer agreements, are arrangements that allow a client to retain a lawyer for a predetermined level of legal services. This may include legal documents, consultations, or other legal services that have a fixed price, such as financial statements, applications, contracts, or affidavits.

Both unbundled and bundled legal services offer a way for clients to take on some of their casework on their own, retaining a lawyer for tasks that are out of the scope of the average person.

Benefits of Unbundled Legal Services

Here are some advantages to offering unbundled legal services at your firm:

Access to Legal Services

Legal fees are often expensive in the best of circumstances and some clients may need legal services that are out of their reach, whether due to affordability, geographic location, or other factors. Offering unbundled legal services helps clients get legal help on an as-needed basis, taking on some of the work themselves and paying only for the services that require a lawyer. With unbundled legal service agreements, clients always have the option to retain more legal help as their case moves forward.

A Wider Client Base

Law firms can miss out on a big client base because of access and affordability. If your firm offers unbundled legal services, you can provide full-service representation for clients who choose — and can afford it — as well as clients who only seek limited-scope representation.

Beyond having a larger book of business, having a broader client base can impact overall retention and cash flow for your firm. 

How to Implement Unbundled Legal Services

Adding unbundled legal services to your law firm requires the following steps:

1. Understand the Ethics

The ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 472 (2015) regarding unbundled legal services states that lawyers are authorized to provide limited-scope representation under Model Rule 1.2(c). This recommends that lawyers that provide unbundled services detail the scope of representation to the client in writing. ABA Opinion 472 further states that lawyers can limit the scope of representation provided it’s reasonable and the client provides informed consent.

The rules regarding unbundled services vary by jurisdiction, however, so it’s important to check your local jurisdiction’s rules and laws, particularly for small firms and solo law firms. If necessary, seek state bar or court permission.

2. Check Market Gaps

The demand for unbundled services varies by the market and your practice area. When you’re planning to offer unbundled services, consider which clients may struggle with access to justice and areas of law that are rules-based or routine.

Depending on your practice area, offering limited-scope representation may not be an option for all of your legal services. For example, family law and criminal law can be challenging with unbundled legal services.

3. Prepare a Limited-Scope Representation Agreement

You need a clearly defined limited-scope representation agreement that defines what’s included in unbundled legal services and the allocation of legal tasks. Informed consent is also required under the ABA Formal Opinion to ensure that clients understand the limitations and risks of limited-scope representation.

4. Set Prices

Unbundled services are more affordable for clients, so it’s essential that you’re offering reasonable prices for your defined legal services. Consider the competition’s pricing to establish a range for your area.

If possible, use flat-fee pricing to help clients understand exactly what they’re paying for and what they can expect to pay for the entire case. Clear and transparent prices will make your unbundled services more appealing to your clients.

Streamline Your Client Intake Process

Expanding your offering to include unbundled services means you’ll likely bring in more clients, so having a streamlined and efficient client intake process is necessary to keep your practice running smoothly.

Asking the right questions ensures you’re attracting the right clients and establishes trust from the first interaction with your law firm.

You also need a streamlined billing process that helps clients pay easily and securely. With Bill4Time Payments billing software, you can implement and manage a variety of billing models, including flat fees for unbundled services.

Native to the Bill4Time platform, Bill4TimePayments offers firms a secure payment processor that allows their clients to pay invoices online via payment plans, the client portal, and custom payment links, all using the payment method of their choice.

Examples of Unbundled Legal Services

There are plenty of examples of unbundled legal services, including:

• Case evaluation
• Limited litigation
• Transactional guidance
• Document preparation
• Document drafting
• Negotiation advice
• Settlement evaluation
• Agreement review
• Court coaching
• Limited court appearances

For example, a client considering taking legal action might first seek a case evaluation. In this scenario, the lawyer examines the facts, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the case, and provides an opinion on the potential outcomes. This service empowers the client to decide whether to proceed with the case, negotiate a settlement, or pursue alternative dispute resolution methods.

Deliver a Better Client Experience

There are many benefits to offering limited-scope legal services for both your clients and your firm. You can provide better services to your clients and help people who may otherwise be unable to access legal help. It’s important to set yourself up for success, however, with a clear limited-scope agreement, a streamlined intake process, and smooth, simple billing with law practice management software like Bill4Time.

Why not give Bill4Time a spin with a free trial? See for yourself how it can improve your business operations, allowing you to expand your services and grow your firm.

With off-page SEO, your website and social media profiles play a supporting role, at least initially. It requires a bit of upfront work, but it’s a powerful way to generate traffic, leads, and revenue for your law firm.

Here’s the best part about off-page SEO. It permanently eliminates your dependence on third-party lead sources and providers.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO involves strategies outside your website to improve its position in search rankings, such as earning backlinks from reputable sources and managing your firm’s online reputation.

Ronell Smith, writing for Moz, describes off-page SEO as:

The act of optimizing your brand’s online and offline footprint through the use of content, relationships, and links to create an optimal experience for prospects and search engine crawl bots. It typically leads to gradual increases in positive brand mentions, search rankings, traffic to your site, and conversions.”

It’s an integral part of search engine optimization.

The term off-page refers to third-party signals used by people and search engines to vet the quality of your business. These signals are ranking factors. Google uses more than 200 different ranking factors in their algorithm to assess the strength and trustworthiness of your law firm.

Why Attorneys Should Care About Off-Page SEO

This terminology can be confusing for many attorneys, as Smith demonstrated in an exchange he had with his client, an attorney:

For the attorney seated in front of me in my kid’s elementary school lunchroom, I might as well have just told him the earth is flat.

‘That makes no sense to me,’ he said, pushing his chin forward and tilting his head as if waiting for me to admit that I was pulling his leg. ‘You mean, there’s all this stuff [SEO] does on my site? And there is the stuff that we — me, my team and [SEO] — should be doing off our site as well? That’s like telling me, ‘It’s not enough that you live and pay for a nice house in a gated community. You also need to guard the gate to the community and pick up trash along the road leading up to your driveway.'”

So Smith reframed his client’s metaphor a bit.

“Not caring about off-site SEO is like having that great house in the gated community, but none of your friends want to visit because they’ve heard from others that it smells gross on the inside, and no one they talk to can either confirm or deny it. It’s not enough to only care about your website/brand or your house/neighborhood; you must always be working to enhance its reputation to ensure others will desire to visit/learn more about it.”

This is you. Your clients don’t have the knowledge, tools, or experience they need to evaluate your law firm properly. In any city, every city, there are 60 to 100 attorneys in your practice area, begging for your client’s attention.

It’s overwhelming. Choosing an attorney is not at all like hiring a consultant or selecting an accountant. Most of the time, your clients arrive with pain, problems, and distress. On some level, many of these clients are facing the fight of their lives. They’re looking for a protector who is willing to defend their interests. If they get this wrong, they lose everything.

This is why off-page SEO is so essential — prospective clients can’t afford to take a chance on that great house in a gated community on the off chance that it smells gross on the inside. It’s too much of a risk.

Is Off-Page SEO Worth It for Attorneys?

With off-page SEO, clients can use third-party resources to assess, vet, and verify important details about your law firm without your knowledge. Reports that are positive, consistent, and exceptional draw clients to your law firm automatically.

Attorneys can use off-page SEO to:

• Attract your ideal group of prospective clients (those who are willing and able to spend)
• Crowd out libel and vitriol from disgruntled clients
• Reduce your cost per lead (CPL)
• Increase your return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Boost law firm revenue year-over-year
• Create leverage, so you’re able to say no to disagreeable or costly clients
• Decrease the reliance on individual rainmakers or partners
• Reduce client poaching
• Increase client loyalty and demand for services over time

You can do all this and more, but is all the extra work worth it?

It’s no secret that many attorneys hate sales and marketing. John Cunningham at the Legal Marketing Reader lists the following reasons for this hatred:

1. Clients hate being sold.
2. Sales and marketing is a violation of our professional ethics.
3. Your time is better spent on billable work.
4. You don’t know what you’re doing so you could do more harm than good.
5. You went to law school to practice law, not build a business.
6. Marketing doesn’t apply to attorneys since you don’t sell a physical product.
7. Sales and marketing is outside your comfort zone.
8. You’re too busy to market your law firm.
9. All of your new clients come from referrals.
10. You already know how to market your law firm.

These are all legitimate objections, and they all have reasonable solutions. There’s a simple and efficient way to circumvent these problems while achieving the results off-page SEO provides.

Educate prospective clients.

The scientific literature is clear on this. Our brains are hardwired to seek out and enjoy novelty. Research shows novelty sparks exploration and learning. Education attracts prospective clients because it’s the mechanism that meets your client’s need for newness. What does this mean for attorneys and law firms?

There’s no need to sell.

If you meet your client’s need for novelty and you’re addressing the problems that trigger your client’s negative bias, you have the tools you need to attract their attention.

What does this mean? If you’re a commercial real estate attorney, for example, you can educate prospective clients about:

• The consequences of poor due diligence (when purchasing property)
• Environmental factors that destroy your portfolio
• The must-have clauses your contracts and tenant leases should have to maximize protection
• Property defects that destroy investor cash flows
• Protecting your investment in a construction dispute
• Why your LLC can’t protect your real estate business

Can you see what’s happening?

In each of these examples, the emphasis is on education, not selling. Attracting clients, in this context, is all about following a four-step process:

1. Identifying your ideal client (e.g., revenue, problems, practice areas, temperament, etc.)
2. Surveying your ideal client to get a list of their desires, goals, fears, frustrations, and problems
3. Creating a list of ideal client hotspots (e.g., local venues, clubs, publishers, or tangential sources)
4. Creating content that addresses these desires, goals, fears, frustrations, and problems

That’s it.

I’m oversimplifying here, but this is the basic foundation of off-page SEO.  Let’s look at the practical steps to follow when using off-page SEO to attract a steady stream of prospective clients.

Using Off-Page SEO To Attract a Steady Stream of Law Firm Clients

Here are some practical steps you can follow to boost website traffic to your law firm. This list is not intended to be comprehensive; these are a few strategies based on a few factors:

• You’re probably very busy
• Your advertising budget may be limited
• You need leads now
• You need leads consistently

Let’s take a look at a few strategies you can use to generate leads immediately.

Step #1: Advertise using the 60-30-10 framework.

Most attorneys lose money on advertising. They create ads, enter their credit card information, and send visitors to their homepage. As you’d expect, this fails to generate leads or produce revenue.

60-30-10 changes that.

It’s a concept popularized (with slight differences) by Perry Marshall, Wordtracker, and Digital Marketer.

Here’s how it works.

• You spend 10% of your ad budget on Cold traffic. You promote your content to highly targeted groups of local prospective clients who have never heard of you. You provide them with value in the form of education — a free tool, quiz, download, or content. If you have to lose money, you lose it here to gain valuable insights everywhere else.
• You use 30% of your ad budget on Warm traffic. Any prospects from your cold traffic who are now: (a.) Warm – they’re familiar with your law firm, they visited your website, consumed your educational content, or viewed an ad, (b.) Interested enough in your offer to covert, and (c.) Committed enough to engage with you. Your warm traffic is far more likely to convert, so spending 30% of your ad budget on this audience makes sense.
• You direct 60% of your ad budget on Hot traffic. These are the prospective clients who have converted in some way — they came to your seminar, read your book, or subscribed to receive more education. They’re followers on social media; they’ve signed up for your email newsletter, etc. They’ve self-identified, showing a clear interest in the education your law firm provides.

Here’s a simple strategy you can use to create outstanding content.

Reach out to a group, publisher, or educator in your local community. Offer to provide their audience with a free seminar, talk, or workshop. Record your speech in its entirety. You now have a lead magnet.

Now you’re ready to advertise.

1. Create ads on your platform of choice, e.g., Google ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, etc.
2. Spend 10 percent of your ad budget to advertise cold traffic to promote your education (tag prospects who visit your website)
3. Spend 30 percent of your ad budget advertising to those who visited your website (step two above). Make an irresistible offer (e.g., free consultation, enticing bonus, more education, a free copy of your book, etc.). Test your offers to see what works best. Tag prospects who accept your offer as “hot.”
4. Spend 60 percent of your ad budget advertising to hot prospects. Advertise your amazing reviews on Avvo, Yelp, or Google Reviews. Promote television appearances, awards won — anything that increases your authority, credibility, or prestige.
5. Make another irresistible offer (e.g., free consultation or enticing bonus). Be frank about your availability and the number of clients you can take on at any given time. If you have a specific amount of slots available for new clients, communicate that. Continue to promote your amazing reviews, linking prospects to your review profiles on third-party sites.  

This five-step process generates leads quickly.

You can expand your ad budget and the platforms where you advertise as your budget allows.

Step #2: Build a strong review portfolio

Research shows your law firm can lose as many as 69.9 percent of customers with four negative aggregate reviews in Google.  Reviews can increase your conversion rates by as much as 270 percent! The better your client reviews, the easier it is for you to attract clients, leads, and sales.

Your online reviews amplify or nullify your prospective client’s trust before you even meet them.

How do you use this? By automating review management. Reputation management tools make it easy to request, receive, and promote five-star reviews from established, A-player clients. Here’s a simple strategy you can use to attract more reviews.

1. You’ve finished your work with a client. You email, text, or post a message with a straightforward question. “On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, 5 being excellent, how likely are you to recommend us?” This question helps you to segment clients who are hostile, apathetic, and believers.
2. Create an email or text autoresponder sequence that enables you to reach out to clients automatically. You’ll be able to consistently request reviews without being directly involved. If clients are open to it, you’ll receive reviews (and new clients via Google search and review platforms like Yelp) without being involved directly.
3. Send hostiles to an internal review form. These clients provide you with the feedback your firm needs to grow automatically. Send friendlies to the review site of your choice (e.g., Avvo, Yelp, Google Reviews), where they’ll be able to share their story with other interested prospects.
4. Thank friendlies and hostiles for their willingness to share their feedback. Integrate their feedback, then show both groups that you took the time to act on their feedback.

Here’s the thing about online reviews. They have a significant impact on your off-page SEO. Google treats reviews as a ranking signal, the stronger your review portfolio on sites like Yelp, Avvo, or Google, the more prospective clients you’ll attract to your law firm.

Step #3: Become a serial interviewee

If you’ve already reached out to groups, publishers, and educators in your local community, you should have a list of interview targets. These are local sources you can partner with to share educational content. With this strategy, you’re pitching yourself as a guest for local venues and publishers. Possible sources include:

• Podcasts
• Radio shows
• Meetups
• Keynote speaking
• Becoming a panelist
• Television
• Webcasts
• Local AMA’s (Reddit style)
• Bonus guest at relevant workshops, panels, or events

Here’s the key.

You’ll need to deliver incredible value as an interviewee for this strategy to work. This strategy is all about wowing your audience. Instead of selling at the end of your presentation, offer more education via your website. When these prospective clients arrive on your site, tag and add them to your 60-30-10 framework.

Record all appearances.

You can turn these appearances into the future lead magnets, products, bonuses, or incentives to attract even more clients. Recording your educational materials means the value you provide is permanent and never-ending. Add your recorded content to your 60-30-10 framework.

Post your content on YouTube.

If it’s video, make sure it’s edited professionally. If it’s audio, create simple slides that go along with your presentation. Optimize each video around a specific, high-traffic keyword. Here’s a comprehensive guide showing you how to do just that.

Advertise each new video heavily, via the 60-30-10 framework, for the first 24 hours, to get your video ranked. Continue to promote your videos over time to build your following. Embed your videos on your site and use it as a lead magnet. Be sure to tag the visitors that arrive on your website.

Reach out to each of the partners you collected in step one and ask them if they’d like a copy of the video or audio as well. Make it easy for your partners to share and promote the video; the easier it is for them to promote, the more likely they are to do it.  

Step #4: Optimize your Google my business account

Research from Think with Google shows:

• Google is the number one review platform; 63.6 percent of searchers search for reviews on Google before visiting a business.
• There are 3.5 billion searches every day. That volume grows by 10 percent every year.
• Google accounts for 57.5 percent of all reviews worldwide, across all review platforms.
• A 900+ percent increase in mobile searches for  “___ near me today/tonight.“
• A 500 percent increase in “near me” mobile searches (i.e., “attorneys near me”)
• 200+ percent growth in mobile searches for “Open” + “now” + “near me” (i.e., “law firms near me open now,”)
• Search volume for local places, without the qualifier “near me,” has grown by 150 percent 
• Google My Business signals) are the most important ranking factor for local pack rankings (25.12 percent of the total).
• 25.12 to 27.94 percent of your local search rankings (local pack + localized organic rankings) are dependent on your Google My Business profile according to a recent ranking factors study by Moz.
• Online reviews make up another 6.47 to 15.44 percent of online reviews.

Google is the de facto standard. Prospective clients will use Google to vet your law firm, assess reviews, and verify your credentials. Any off-page SEO benefits you receive will most likely come from Google. Your Google My Business account is an essential ranking factor that’s used to gauge your performance.

Here’s a comprehensive guide you can use to optimize your Google My Business account.

Off-Page SEO Is the Key to Success in Google

Remember the metaphor from Ronell Smith earlier in this blog? Most attorneys have the incredible house in a beautiful gated community, but prospective clients aren’t interested in visiting. From their client’s perspective, their house smells like vomit on the inside — but their existing clients won’t confirm or deny.

This isn’t you.

Your clients don’t have the knowledge, tools, or experience they need to evaluate your law firm properly. Instead of begging for your client’s attention, you earn it. You provide prospective clients with the education and training they need to choose your law firm.

Education eliminates the need to sell.

Instead of sales pressure, your clients receive clarity and the options they need to choose the right law firm. The secret, as we’ve seen, is novelty. Novelty sparks exploration and learning in your client’s mind. It motivates them to seek a solution to the problems you’ve identified.

Provide clients with the education they need, and you’ll find they bring their problems to you automatically. 

The only way to have an effective business relationship in the digital era is through clear and concise communication, and for lawyers, clear communication has never been more important. From communicating the progress of a case with your client to sending payment reminders — digital communication has broken down barriers and made the attorney-client relationship more transparent than ever before. 

Properly utilizing a client portal for communication can do wonders not just for your client, but for your firm as well — especially when it comes to the billing and payment process. Let’s take a look at what a client portal is, and a few ways your firm can use Bill4Time’s client portal to enhance the communication experience with your clients.  

What Is a Client Portal? 

A client portal serves as a secured communicative bridge between attorneys and clients regarding the status of their cases, acts as a portal to store files and documents, and provides a holistic view of payment history and upcoming payment due dates, and other appointments. 

The Benefits of Bill4Time’s Law Firm Client Portal 

1. Secure Communication Between Attorneys and Clients 

When handling matters and cases, information must always be confidential and secure. According to Rule 1.6: Confidentiality of Information, “Lawyers shall make reasonable efforts to present the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.” 

With an increasing number of cybercrimes, typical methods of communicating with clients through emails and phone calls may pose a concern if extra security measures aren’t put in place. However, using Bill4Time’s client portal can eliminate the worry of unsecured communication of sensitive information. 

Before inviting clients to your client portal, lawyers should configure and modify the settings to their liking. For example, if you’re looking to send an automatic notification email to your client after you send an invoice, simply click “Yes” and then Bill4Time will automatically send the notification email for you. Once the settings are set to what you desire, invite your clients to the portal, and your clients can instantly view their invoices, outstanding balance, and payment history. They can also make online payments from anywhere, anytime, on any device. 

2. Easy Payment Processing 

Lawyers can also provide an easier and faster payment experience for their clients with our client portal. Oftentimes, lawyers receive late invoices due to an outdated and slow payment process, hence leading to a high accounts receivable. The traditional way for clients to pay may pose threats such as human errors, slow mailing time, or potentially lost checks. However, Bill4Time’s client portal allows clients to easily pay invoices at any time with just one click of the “Pay Now” button. 

When making payments on Bill4Time, clients can utilize Bill4Time Payments to pay in multiple ways such as credit cards or ACH. At the same time, lawyers benefit from receiving payments quicker and staying 100% compliant with IOLTA, ABA, and state bar guidelines for accepting ePayments. 

Better yet, Bill4Time Payments doesn’t require third-party services or integrations as it’s built natively in the software. When you activate Bill4Time Payments in your account, you get access to exclusive payment reports so you can stay on top of your cash flow. With Bill4Time Payments, law firms have proven to get paid 7 days faster than those who don’t use Bill4Time Payments.

3. Better Marketability and Brand Presence

While law firms should have an organized internal process to manage cases and matters, implementing marketing strategies and tactics are also important in order to bring in more business. And with 53% of merchants planning to expand their payment methods, upgrading your law firm payment methods may become a matter of marketability. As more and more people are adopting digital solutions, law firms have to keep up to stay on top of the competition. 

A client portal with a law firm’s branding will also set a firm apart from its competition. When law firms implement a client portal, clients will gain a sense that the law firm is tech-savvy, modern, and highly secure. Law firms can extend their brand by customizing their portal and payment gateway with company logos, brand colors, and more. It will look as if your law firm has its own payment processing system, therefore enhancing overall client satisfaction and experience. 

The Benefits of Implementing Bill4Time’s Client Portal Are Endless 

As the world is getting more digitized, law firms need to catch up with the trends in order to scale their businesses. An easy-to-use client portal with the ability to gain a holistic view of payments is just one of the ways to improve client satisfaction. 

If you’re interested in creating a stronger bridge between your law firm and clients, get started on the free trial or book a demo with our team to see what Bill4Time can do for your law firm.