Explore the art of non-billable work management and its importance in maintaining client transparency and trust. In this Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast episode, discover strategies for accurately categorizing billable and non-billable hours to prevent confusion and ethical issues. Learn how to effectively balance time, ensure clear communication, and strengthen relationships with clients and your firm. Join us in mastering law practice while delivering exceptional value to clients. 

Visit our website at classroom2courtroom.com. Tune in to enhance your time management skills and billing accuracy.

Scott Benton: Hey everyone. Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. And today we're going to take a look at the art of non billable work management.

Scott Benton: Today, in order to assist your overall use of the success cycle, which is what we talk about on this podcast, as far as the log your time portion goes, we're going to look at the art of non billable work management. Generally speaking, when we talk about writing billing entries after you've completed a legal service on a case, We're talking about billable hours. But when it comes to providing legal services, not all time is billable. Some events and tasks are non billable and they should be recorded with billing entries that are marked as non billable.

While billable hours include activities such as talking on the phone to your client about their case or writing a demand letter or filing a motion, there are other activities that you must also take care of that are non billable. Non billable work includes activities such as conducting internal team meetings about the case and about developing case strategy.

Billing clients for non billable work incorrectly and listing those as billable can also lead to client dissatisfaction, billing disputes, or even a loss of trust.

And a loss of trust is exactly what you don't want to lose. It can erode the foundation of trust, it can ruin relationships, and in many cases, you've spent a lot of time building which needs to be protected. You want to make certain that you understand all of the intricacies and nuances that are part of writing billing entries. As you're going to be under a lot of pressure, you can probably see how marking non billable time entries as billable can happen, so you want to exercise extreme caution here.

And don't leave this to chance. Sit down with your supervising attorney. Without that clarity, many attorneys make the mistake of categorizing time entries as billable when it should be non billable. And vice versa sometimes they work on a task that they assume is non billable. They mark it as non billable, but it turns out to be billable, so you want to be careful there.

Also, make sure non billable tasks are properly marked in the timekeeping system that the firm's using in order to prevent confusion during billing time. Fortunately, you're going to have your supervising attorney going through all of your billing entries before they're added to your client's billing statement, which is good. But ultimately, you want to be clear on what is and what is not billable, and you want to mark those time entries appropriately.

Also, make sure that you don't forget to balance your time. You really want to allocate sufficient time for non billable work when you have it, but you also want to avoid letting it take away from your billable hours. When it comes to non billable tasks such as group meetings about a case, these should still be logged in order to track productivity and to contribute to the firm's operations. It also demonstrates to the client on their billing statement that work's getting done on their case, and that they're not paying for it.

So make sure your supervising attorney is routinely reviewing your time entries with you to ensure accuracy. And don't forget to ask questions about your billing entries and how you can improve them.

More than likely your firm's going to be using sophisticated This is a sophisticated time management software for you to log your billing entries on that can tell the difference between billable and non billable tasks and will flag discrepancies early on so you can make any corrections that you're able to make.

So as you can see, using precision and managing your non billable work and timekeeping is crucial for a smooth billing process, maintaining and growing client trust, and adhering to ethical standards. Getting your non billable time entries correctly marked strengthens the relationship between the attorney, the firm, and the client.

I'm Scott Benton. I'm the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out our episode. Now if you like this podcast and you'd like to get more information about us, you can always go to our website at classroom2courtroom. com. That's classroom, the number two, courtroom.

And as always, don't forget to share, like, and subscribe to stay on top of all of our latest episodes. And until next time, we hope you'll join us in making the world a better place. One client at a time.