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The Productive Practitioner Materials By:

Jennifer M. Ramovs, Esq.

Accellis Technology Group www.accellis.com

Whether you’re looking to increase billable hours or reduce overhead costs, a Practice Management system can help you do both. Attorneys, paralegals and staff alike can all be more productive using shared calendars, contact management, billing integration, document management, and much more. Here are some ways a Practice Management system can help you bill more, waste less time, and make everyone in your firm more efficient. 1. Use Chains and Triggers to Streamline Processes

A. Create processes and checklists for the different practice areas in your firm. Chains allow you to link records together and calculate their dates based on other events, or, create a chain of separate records. For example: If you take the same 10 steps every time you handle a Probate matter, turn that into a memorized list the automatically gets tied to the matter in Time Matters.

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To set up a chain, go to Setup > Templates > Chain You can add a chain template to an existing folder, or, create a new folder.

In this example, we are going to create a Probate Chain. So, click on the PROBATE folder, then select “Add Record” from the top to add your first chain item. The first item in our chain will be Date of Death. In this case, I will use a “Note” Record Type, because this is not a date that needs to be on my calendar or on my To-Do list. It is only an item in my chain because appointments and To-Dos will be scheduled based on this date.

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Hit “OK.” Then, you will be presented with the Note Form. Enter the title of the event in the Descriptions (Date of Death)

Hit Save & Close. Next, highlight the “Date of Death” chain item, and then select “Add Record.”

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Enter your item description. Then, in the Calculate Date From field, select Date of Death.

In the next screen, you will be presented with the EVENT form, where you can tell Time Matters how to calculate the date from the Date of Death.

In this case, we want the Ohio Estate Tax to be due 9 months from the Date of Death:

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Hit OK. Continue these steps until you have all the necessary items in your chain.

B. Use a Trigger to be sure that this Chain gets applied to all of your Probate Matters. From File> Set Up > Templates > Triggers, you can set up the rules for this Probate Trigger.

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First, tell Time Matters what type of record the Trigger should launch from. In this example, we want the trigger to launch when we add a new Probate Matter.

Next, click on the Add Record button to create your new trigger:

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Next, we need to tell Time Matters that the trigger fires when a new record is added (remember, we already indicated that the Record type is MATTER on the previous screen). Then, we limit the scope of the trigger to indicate that the trigger fires when a new Record is added with the code of PROBATE (pick this code from the code drop down list).

Finally, define the actual trigger in the ACTIONS section. Click on the ADD button, and indicate that the action to take is to create a chain.

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Then, select the chain that you want to add (in this example, Probate). When you add a new Probate matter, you will see the chain pop up to confirm the chain you are about to add:

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In the above screen, you can assign the items in the chain to a particular staff. Next, you will see the actual records that are going to be added to Time Matters and their relevant dates. Hit the Create button.

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2. Delegate - Use the Delegate To-Do Code in TM. i. Track what you have delegated, when you delegated it, and what

progress has been made. ii. Don’t just throw things to your employees and hope they figure it out.

When you delegate something, make sure they know:

• The client the work is for

• Whether their time is billable

• How much time they should spend

• The deadline for the task

• Exactly what you want and how you want it to be presented to you.

iii. Be clear in your direction and expectation. Always give a deadline. Always delegate in writing. From Time Matters, create a new To-Do. From the Code dropdown, select DELE, for “Delegated.”

Then, in the Staff field, enter the initials of the Staff member to whom you are delegating the To-Do. You can use the Note section of the To-Do to clarify your instructions.

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You can then create a Quick Tab so that you can see a filtered list of To-Dos that you have delegated to other people in your firm.

3. Customize Time Matters A. Reduce reliance on the paper file – get what you need from Time Matters.

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Further, by customizing the fields for a particular practice area, you have given yourself a built in resource for reporting. If you have a field in TM, you can pull that field out into a report. The SEND TO EXCEL feature in Time Matters enables you to put together extremely detailed reports - without the expense of custom reports.

4. Formattable Clipboard The formattable clipboard allows you to essentially “copy” information from multiple fields in Time Matters and “paste” it anywhere you like. You can use the formattable clipboard to create complete documents, but don’t underestimate the time savings by using even the simplest form of the formattable clipboard - A name and address block. Example: need to get the full name, company name, and mailing address for a contact so you can send a letter. You open Time Matters, and copy and paste from each field. Or, worse yet, you re-type it in the document you are drafting. Instead, use the formattable clipboard that comes standard with Time Matters: While in a Contact Form, or, from the index with the contact highlighted, click on the Clipboard icon.

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Next, select the format that you want to copy to. The standard address block clipboard is found in the General Docs folder, “inside Address/Envelope.”

Then, simply Paste the information wherever you like. Perhaps you are forwarding this contact information to someone via email. Open your email, and Paste.

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Just a TINY example of what formattable clipboards can do.

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5. Link Time Matters with your Billing Program A. Track everything you do in Time Matters. This includes Phone Calls, Emails,

Events, etc. B. Timekeepers should enter their OWN time through Time Matters whenever

possible. No handwriting time on a log sheet, giving it to someone else to type, then reviewing it again on the pre-bill, then making changes/corrections. This is a colossal waste of time for multiple people in your office. If you MUST rely on someone else to enter your time, dictate it. Use Time Matters to help confirm that all of your time is captured. Use your Journal and individual document, email, and phone lists to see what you did on a particular day. Then, use the “Send to Billing” option to turn that record into a billing entry.

For example: You properly log the details of a phone call in Time Matters. You can quickly and easily send the Phone call to Billing. From the phone call, click on the “Send to Billing” Icon at the top of the Form.

You will then be presented with a new Billing Form. Notice that it inherited the Matter information – Time Matters knows which matter to bill for this call. Simply enter your duration, and hit Save & Close. Your time for this phone call has now been captured.

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Use the LISTS in Time Matters to see all of the phone calls, emails, and documents you have dealt with on a particular day/week/month, and see at a glance whether or not you have billed your time for them.

To make it easy to tell whether you have billed for this particular phone call, always add the “Bill Date” field to your list view. If there is a date in the field, you have billed for it. If there isn’t a date – you haven’t billed for it. In the alternative, you can create a Quick Tab to display all of the phone calls that you did NOT turn into a billing record. Visual reminders to bill your time are one of the BEST ways to maximize your productivity.

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You can do the same for all lists in Time Matters. This is an especially helpful reminder for emails.

6. Reduce the Use of Paper in Your Office

A. Save Research Electronically When legal professionals perform legal research, they typically do so on-line via Lexis Nexis, Westlaw, CaseMaker, or some other on-line resource. The days of the fully stocked and updated legal library within a firm are pretty much gone. However, I have found that on-line legal research is still using a ton of paper. When we find a case, statute, law review article, or treatise on a particular topic, the tendency is to print the case and put it in the paper file. The truth is, much of what we print ends up not being relevant to our case, but we never actually remove it from the paper file. The alternative to this method is to more thoroughly review cases and other legal research resources from your screen (yes, you should get a bigger monitor, and even consider using dual monitors). If you still determine they are relevant enough to save for your case, save them electronically (i.e. the save to file or print to file options you see on Lexis or Westlaw). You can save all of these documents to a Windows folder associated with your case. Even better – when it comes time for others to collaborate with you on the case, the research is saved in a central location and is available to everyone. It’s not thrown in a paper file in a box on your floor for everyone to dig through.

B. Create PDF feature in Time Matters

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Often we don’t want to send a Word document to a client; and we certainly want to avoid printing and faxing if we can. If you are saving documents in Time Matters, you can easily turn a document into a PDF so that you email it easily.

From your Documents Index, right click on the document and select “Create PDF.”

You will see the following splash screen:

Then, from the Documents list, you will see the document with a “.pdf” file extension in addition to the original document.

7. Use Time Matters Document Management

Scavenger Hunts are Not Billable – Let Time Matters help users profile and save documents to the proper location. With this system, Time Matters provides users with a form to fill out and profile a document or other digital file. Since the users see the TM Save button from within Word, Excel, and Adobe, they are more likely to profile the document, increasing the likelihood that the document will be properly saved to the appropriate matter.

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8. Make Sure Time Matters is being properly backed up – every single night! There is nothing less productive than recovering from a disaster – but it takes far less time to recover from a disaster if you have preventative procedures in place. Disasters come in many forms…here are just a few ways to protect your firm and reduce the impact such a disaster may have on your productivity.

A. UPS - When you have a power failure, avoid damage to your expensive equipment and software by having things on an uninterruptable power supply. This will enable you to properly shut down programs and power down servers, printers, etc. These are not meant to enable you to continue working for hours while the power is off, they have a limited battery life and are designed to allow you to safely shut down your equipment and to protect again the power surge that may come during a storm, etc.

B. BackUps

• Complete, not incremental back ups are best

• Check the backup log…and the actual media to be sure the data actually backed up

• Store the backup off site. A nightly back up is of no use to you if the swappable hard drive is in the server closet when the fire starts…

• Consider a secondary backup, either online or a different media type. C. Virus Protection - Make sure every server and workstation has virus protection

and that they are automatically updated.

9. Build a Foundation for Productivity D. Make sure you have an IT platform that is current and in working order

iv. Minimize work stoppages from random application and hardware crashes v. Use current versions of software. Purchase a maintenance contract so

that you can budget the cost for unlimited technical support and product updates. By using the current version of software, you are using a version that is currently supported by the manufacturer - which makes getting technical support much easier. Further, it is helpful to have all of your firm members using the same version of a piece of software, whenever possible. This will eliminate file compatibility issues, particularly with Word and Outlook. Consider this scenario: You have an old version of Time Matters, one that isn’t even supported anymore. It is running on a Windows XP desktop. That desktop dies, and you have to purchase a new machine, with Windows 7. Now, your very old version of Time Matters isn’t supported under Windows 7, so you have to upgrade Time Matters just so you can purchase a new desktop. This is an upgrade by fire – don’t operate this way if you can avoid it. Budget, plan, upgrade.

vi. Purchase warranties for your computers (same or next day – always).

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• You cannot afford the time involved if you do not purchase a warranty. The alternative is to call tech support, describe your problem, wait for them to mail you a box so you can SEND them your computer, send them your computer, wait for them to fix it, then wait for them to send it back. Can you afford to be without your machine for a full work week or more?

vii. Give your employees a tech support resource that they can use.

• Don’t make them struggle with issues that they are not competent to handle.

• Employees waste a horrendous amount of time rebooting their machines, working around problems with their hardware and software, and trying to fix things on their own. Make sure your employees know who in the firm they should be reporting technical issues to, and who they can call when the problem needs to be addressed.

• Make sure every employee has the number to call technical support when they have an issue with Time Matters. With the Annual Maintenance Plans, you get unlimited technical support. You paid for it –use it!

viii. Training

• Maximize your ROI by making sure your firm can use what you have given them.

• Give power users the best equipment. Don’t waste a brand new laptop with dual processors and tons of RAM on the semi- retired partner who comes in once a week to check email.

• When you are making a decision about software, make sure the power users are involved. While the managing partner might know what you can afford, and your IT director might know what your network can support – only the USERS know what they need a program to do day in and day out.

10. Create a Comfortable Atmosphere A. Make sure your office chairs are comfortable; desks are not falling apart and are

at the right height. B. Make sure laptops users have an full sized external accessories

There is no need to be hunched over a laptop. Use a real mouse, full keyboard and regular monitor so your shoulders are not up by your ears all day.

C. Consider dual monitors

• Reduces time spent scrolling and toggling between multiple programs

• Allows you to have multiple windows maximized and in view

• Enables you to more easily review full documents on the screen, rather than printing them

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D. Wireless Headset

• Frees your hands to type in phone call notes or create to-dos an appointments based on the phone call

• Not holding a receiver reduces muscle tension…resulting in a more relaxed user!

• Enables you to move around your office while on the phone, run to the fax machine, refill your coffee, etc.

• Without tripping, of course

• No cords tangled up in your chair and you move around your L-shaped desk…or stretch to reach the paper file on your credenza…

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This publication, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, including photocopying. You may not resell, nor reproduce this publication or the content within for any reason. Unauthorized reproduction or transmission, including any part of this manual is a violation of Federal law.

Copyright and Trademark Notice:

LexisNexis and Lexis are registered trademarks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used under license. Time Matters is a registered trademark of LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc. This manual prepared and distributed by:

Accellis Technology Group Jennifer M. Ramovs, Esq. 5350 Transportation Blvd. Suite 1 Garfield Heights, Ohio 44125 216-662-3200 www.accellis.com [email protected]