Billing systems for law firms are usually compared feature by feature, which hides what they are: a pipeline with four places money leaks out. Time that is never written down leaks before the system sees it. Time that is written down and then written off leaks at the bill. Bills that go out late leak into the next quarter. Bills that are never collected leak at the end. A system can help with three of the four and cannot help at all with the first, and knowing which leak is yours is worth more than any comparison table.
Leak one: time never recorded
The largest and the least visible, because it leaves no trace anywhere. On the worked example this site publishes, one unrecorded hour a week from each of 6 fee earners at $280 an hour is $87,360 a year. No system can recover it; the only thing that moves the number is showing fee earners the money rather than the percentage.
Leaks two and three: write-offs and delay
These are what a billing system genuinely improves. Bills raised closer to the work are argued with less, and a system that surfaces unbilled matters before the cut-off turns a quarterly surprise into a weekly routine. Together they are the realisation gap: $24,767 a month on the worked example, $297,199 a year.
Leak four: collection
The part firms least like measuring, because it is about clients they still act for. A billing system can age the debt and prompt; it cannot make the call. Measure it anyway, because a firm that reports billed rather than collected is reporting a number nobody can spend.
Questions people ask about billing systems for law firms
What does a billing system actually change?
Mostly timing. Bills go out sooner and unbilled work becomes visible sooner. That is worth real money, but it is a different claim from recovering time nobody recorded.
Should billing sit with the accounts or with the fee earners?
The recording sits with the fee earners and the raising sits with whoever owns the cut-off. Firms that put both in one place tend to lose whichever half that person likes less.
How do we know which leak is ours?
Measure recorded value, billed value and collected value for one quarter. The three gaps between the four numbers are the four leaks, and one of them will be much larger than the others.