Considering that you’ve chosen to add LeanLaw as your attorney billing software, undoubtedly the main reason is because of the billing. You want a professional-looking invoice to send out to your clients. But more importantly, as an attorney, you do not want to miss any client costs or time billed. You want flexibility with the billing. For example, if you have staff – your admins, for example – they can generate the draft invoices which you can review and approve before sending out to QuickBooks and your client.

LeanLaw is very customizable in the billing section. You get to choose what works best for your law firm. Are you a solo firm? Maybe bypass all the steps and have the invoice generated in one click.

Are you a small firm with an administrative assistant? Maybe you want the admin to produce the draft and you take it from there.

Or maybe you are a larger firm using an outsourced accounting firm, which is what we do. Then you will want all the steps from “Ready to Bill” to approvals.

Direct Selection: Ready to Bill

Under this tab will lie all the hours tracked and the expenses tagged to the client. Here is where you can filter down to the time period you are billing for and choose what will be invoiced to the client for the billing period.

If you are a solo attorney, you may want to select this choice so you can speedily produce your monthly invoices.

Draft Step: Ready to Bill + Draft

This will include the ever crucial step of selecting your ready-to-bill choices and then reviewing them as they would be stated on a draft invoice. Having this selection will allow you to be flexible in changes and you can also write off from the draft step. Smaller firms may want this extra step just to preview the bill before it goes to QuickBooks and the client. It is a great combination if you want to have a timekeeper or Admin assisting in the billing process.

Draft, Review and Approve Stage

This is the whole enchilada! You go to ready to bill, create the draft, review and approve it and it will get processed through LeanLaw to QuickBooks. This is the workflow we use when working with our clients. It gives us the flexibility to have all eyes on the invoices.

Legal administrative fee on invoices

Some firms choose to charge a legal administrative fee on top of the regular lawyer’s fees which is included in an invoice. This fee is sometimes confused with extra administrative-like support, but legal admin fees are typically for clerical work like managing the administrative tasks involved with handling clients. This could be things like answering phones, managing appointments, and reviewing contracts.

Interest on Expenses

For attorneys working on a contingency fee basis, in some states and jurisdictions, they can charge a reasonable interest rate on unpaid funds advanced to a client.