Why is it that telling your fee-earners they need to record more of their chargeable time or telling them to bill clients more of the chargeable time they’ve recorded, doesn’t seem to work?
From years of experience in helping law firm owners tackle this issue, I have found the reason it doesn’t work is that there are usually underlying issues getting in the way.
Setting fee-earner targets, doesn’t, on its own, address those issues.
Unless you tackle them, your fee-earners won’t be billing as much of their time as they could (and should) be, and this could be costing you thousands of pounds in lost fee income and profits.
Recently I used our Billable Hours Booster method to help one of our law firm clients identify the underlying issues stopping their fee-earners from consistently hitting their target of 4.2 chargeable hours per day.
Achieving 4.2 hours per day will mean an additional £500,000 of fee income for this firm over the next 12 months. And, because there will be no additional costs involved in generating that extra fee income, all £500,000 of it will be additional profit.
This is why increasing the number of your chargeable (and recovered) hours per fee-earner is one of the most powerful ‘growth levers’ you can use in your law firm.
The Billable Hours Booster method involves first identifying what’s getting in the way of your fee-earners recording more chargeable hours, such as:
- Too much non-chargeable work (admin, internal meetings, inefficient BD activities, etc)
- Too many interruptions or distractions whilst they are trying to do chargeable work
- Lack of confidence in their skills or their value, meaning they don’t record all the hours they spend on chargeable work
- Not enough client work coming in, meaning they don’t have enough to do to meet their targets.
Take action
Once you’ve identified the underlying issues you need to address, you can make a plan to tackle them. The steps you’ll need to take will depend on which issue you have, but once you know what the issue is you can start to work that out.
If you could add one extra chargeable hour per day for each fee-earner you have, what would that amount to in additional fee income and profit for your firm?
The Billable Hours Booster is one of over 150 tools, strategies, and tactics we give our 12-month ‘Profitable Practice’ clients that help them double their fee income and profits without working more hours.
If you’d like my help to discover how to eliminate the 3 Limiting Factors that stop law firms from growing, and implement a 3 Step Accelerator Plan to attract more ideal clients and double your profits without working more hours, join my free online planning session for lawyers: ‘3 Step Accelerator Plan for Small Law Firms’. This session will show you how to eliminate the blocks that keep most small firm owners and senior lawyers working too hard for too little profit.
Or if you’d like my professional advice on which strategies will work best for your firm (and the best way to implement them effectively), come and spend a day with me and other small firm owners at my next online workshop ‘Profitable Practice Growth Secrets For Small Law Firms’. In this small workshop, we’ll work together to analyse the weak points and opportunities within your firm or practice area and create a bespoke ‘Accelerator Plan’ to keep your firm growing profitably regardless of the economic climate. Plus, you’ll learn specific ‘Accelerator’ strategies to ‘Magnetise Clients’ and ‘Neutralise Fee Resistance’ so you can continue to attract high-paying clients in the coming months. See the full agenda for the workshop, read testimonials about the real results of other lawyers have had and check ticket availability HERE.
