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GAZETTE
SEPTEMBER 1984
Perhaps you complain about the level of fees fixed by
third parties. With a proper time costingsystem you could
provide information which would help the Law Society
Professional Remuneration Committee who have to
persuade those who fix tables for court fees and legal aid
fees, etc., that the fees currently chargeable are not
realistic in relation to actual costs or a reasonable return
to the partners — although I do not personally believe
such tables of fees can ever be fair and reasonable to
solicitor and client in individual cases.
Before I try to define time costing I should say that the
handling of the time records and the time costing
operation can be carried out manually or electronically —
it is more laborious manually and because of labour costs
it is unlikely that a manual system would be able to give
you the more sophisticated management information that
will be available in a computerised system. With the
relative cost of computers coming down and more time
recording packages being available for lawyers, 1 would
recommend a computer system but I cannot within this
article discuss the merits of different computer systems.
The Society for Computers and Law of which I am
presently the Chairman, from time to time runs
Workshop Seminars on the use of computers in the office,
including their use for time costing. The systems which I
am to describe do not require computers but the
characteristics of what I am to describe must be in any
system that you might decide to put in.
Time recording
The basis of time costing is of course time recording.
Without well kept and accurate records of the time spent
on a matter you cannot fix the time cost.
For time recording I think that there are two basic
essentials. The first is that you must provide a means
whereby the solicitor or other fee earner can record all the
time he has spent on chargeable work for clients.
Normally he completes a form as he goes along, although
there are on the market electronic methods of doing this.
The form can be a daily time sheet or a weekly sheet. 1
prefer a daily time sheet as I believe that it is easier to keep
and process the records on a daily basis.
The second essential is that the time recorded on a daily
time sheet in respect of each matter should be transferred
regularly to a time ledger for that matter so that at any
point of time you can tell how much time has been spent
on that matter and by whom.
However, when you get down to making a time
recording system work, there are a number of questions
that have to be answered and 1 shall try to look at some of
them. For example:
/ What do we do with time that is not chargeable?
I
believe that all time must be recorded — basically because
1 do not believe that you can record all your chargeable
time properly unless you also record other time. It may
also be relevant to know how much time someone is
spending in your office on administration, business
development, that favourite charity, that Law Society
committee, etc.
2 Who should keep time records?
All fee earners — that
is, partners and members of the staff who perform legal
work directly chargeable to specific clients — normally
not typists, cashiers or receptionists, although a good
secretary or personal assistant might well be operating in
such a way that some of his or her time would be
chargeable and therefore he or she should record his or
her time.
3 What should be the unit of time?
In other words, do you
record your time in units of 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15
minutes or half an hour? The nature of the lawyer's
practice is such that he tends to deal with a large number
of different items for different clients in the course of a
day and therefore the shorter the minimum period is the
better. The ideal is probably 1 minute, that is the time
recorded for any evenf is to the nearest minute. Five
minutes or 6 minutes is probably more practicable.
Experience has shown that if a letter has to be done by a
fee earner the minimum time that he will take is probably
about 5 minutes if you include, for example, time spent
looking at the letter to be replied to, thinking time,
dictating time and eventually reading and signing time —
if it takes less time he probably should not be doing it.
4 Do H i' need to record what has been done in the time? It
is not essential for time costing as such but probably some
record of what has been done is desirable. This can be
done simply by a series of activity codes such as i. for
letter,
A
for attendance at a meeting,
IT
for incoming
telephone call,
R
for research,
RD
for revising drafts, etc.
You may also want to have a record of what was said or
agreed on the telephone or at a meeting, but that will
probably best be recorded separately and placed on the
file — although there are systems which enable you to do
both.
5 How do you identify matters?
It is probably essential
that you have an integrated filing, time recording and
financial accounting system so that each matter has a
unique number used at every point. Provided you have a
handy list of the numbers for the various client matters
you are dealing with it is easy to identify the client matter
on your daily timesheet by its number which can be either
alpha-numeric or simply numeric — if not, a description
of the matter may be sufficient.
6 Do you record time spent on researching the law?
Yes. 11
is of course a fallacy that we know all the law, and anyway
the purpose of the exercise is to find out the cost of
carrying out a particular piece of work and if that involves
time poring over books, etc., record it. Similarly, you
must record time spent picking your trainee's brains
about the current law, time spent travelling to and from a
client's office, etc.
7
Does it take long to keep time records?
The answer
must be 'no' provided you have set up a well-planned
system which cuts to a minimum the extent of the entries
which have to be made by the fee earners. Time recording
requires discipline, and like all discipline it is initially
painful, but a well-planned system makes the acquiring of
the discipline easier. The real secret of keeping good time
records is to record as you go along but also to spend
about two minutes four times a day at equally spaced
intervals balancing the books so that, for example, at
about 10.30 you check the time so far recorded, decide
how the balance of time has been spent and then record it.
The same exercise should be done before lunch, in the
middle of the afternoon and before you leave at night. I
know from long experience that this is the only way to do
it properly. In other words, if you do it as you go along
and have these periodic checks the time taken by a fee
earner is minimal. The time recorded will of course have
to be processed either manually or by being put into a
computer, but this is not fee earner time.
8 How do we deal with time outside normal office hours? 11
must all be recorded against specific matters as the object
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