Billing software for law firm work is sold as though every firm needs it, and at the smallest end that is not obviously true. A solo or a firm of three can bill perfectly well from a spreadsheet, and many do it faster than they would from a system. What changes is not the number of bills, it is the number of people who need to be able to answer a question about them. This page sets out the point at which that shifts, in figures rather than in advice, so a very small firm can decide on its own arithmetic instead of on a vendor's.
Why the spreadsheet works at first
One person holds the whole picture and the tool matches the problem exactly. Nobody has to be trained, nothing has to be configured, and the monthly cost is zero. A system bought at this stage usually adds steps rather than removing them.
What actually changes it
A second person needing the answer. The moment somebody other than the spreadsheet's author has to say what is unbilled on a matter, the spreadsheet stops being a record and becomes a dependency -- and it fails on the week that person is away, which is exactly the week it is asked.
The arithmetic at three fee earners
Scale the worked example down: 3 fee earners at $280 an hour recording 5.2 hours a day produce $4,368 of value a working day. One day of billing delay across the firm is roughly that; a subscription is a fraction of it. Below three, run the numbers rather than assuming.
Questions people ask about billing software for law firm
Is a spreadsheet good enough for a solo?
Often, yes, and this site would rather say so than sell you a subscription. Keep the backup somewhere other than one laptop and revisit it when a second person joins.
What is the first thing to move off the spreadsheet?
The matter list, not the time. Once everybody can see which matters are open and who is on them, the rest can move at its own pace.
Does it matter that we bill fixed fees?
It changes what you bill, not what you record. Record the time anyway: it is the only way to know afterwards whether the fixed fee was priced right.