This piece of software is crucial for every law firm: a centralized case file and time recording system: for billable projects, I am using Netsuite.

In running your law firm, do you feel like you’re burning the candle at both ends? Do you feel like the harder you work, the less you get done? You’re not alone—a lot of overworked attorneys share your plight. But the fact that this problem is common doesn’t mean it’s right. Much of your stress and fatigue is likely self-imposed because of bad time management. Learning a few important skills could revolutionize your schedule and revitalize your energy levels in a minute.

Why Time Recording Is Critical for all companies

Consider this: Of all the assets you have to work with, the one thing you can’t get more of is … time. If your workload is overwhelming, you can get more employees. If you need more revenue, you can get more clients. If you’re disorganized, you can get more storage and organization tools. But we all get the same amount of time. 24 hours in every day, 7 days in every week — and we have to sleep for some of those hours. You can’t get more time, so the best you can do is find creative ways to manage the time you’ve got more effectively. If you don’t, you’ll eventually fall so far behind that you’ll start making mistakes with your law firm clients—and lawyers can’t afford those kinds of mistakes.

Improving your time management will take a little frontloading effort—in other words, you have to use some of your precious time to make a plan. But that time spent will pay huge dividends in greater productivity and reduced stress—and indeed, you will feel like you have more time.

You also need the after calculation in order to find out whether your flat-fee arrangements still are profitable

A cloud-based ERP such as NetSuite can cover all the business processes using a single data source without the need for integration. The key differentiation is that having individual systems will create a lot of silos and require a lot of integration across systems. This often causes loss of data integrity, as well as challenges in long-term maintenance of the systems, when the systems upgrade at different pace.

Netsuite is also our centralized invoicing and accounting system

NetSuite immediately complies with the IRS requirements in most countries.

Netsuite is configured to import bank data, so there is no more keying in of bank account statements.

And Netsuite is our Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

NetSuite CRM is a complete system. NetSuite is good for following up inquiries because then all the data sits right there in our file management system. As soon as a prospect becomes a client, their data is right there for creating a new case file and – most important – an invoice.

Cloud Software is King

Have you noticed that Netsuite sits in the cloud? No more server hardware needed. No more IT staff on your premises = no more worrywarts stealing your valuable time.

That reduces costs, and company downtime is reduced. If one user of the Netsuite cloud software has a problem then all 40,000 Netsuite users have a problem. This will not happen often, the Oracle company will make that sure.

And the users of these pieces of software can work from where they want. All that is needed is a working Internet connection.

Check out the video series below in order to find out more. As we are working on my firm’s actual data, I have blurred those data entries that are sensitive.