Billing in any business or profession is important:
Some managers and owners of businesses and professions think billing is back office stuff, not worthy of their involvement. This is wrong. Any communications with customers and clients is important particularly communications involving money.
For most transactional based law offices, billing is very important. Legal billing helps to create and communicate the value of legal services. Most legal services take place when a client is not present and most legal services have no tangible deliverable like a product, an architectural drawing or an accounting report. It is important for attorneys to take care in describing their services and the time and expertise involved.
I suggest attorneys spend time editing their words to make the descriptions of their legal services clear and succinct. A quote often attributed to Mark Twain is appropriate here: “I apologize for the length of this letter; I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.”
Billing once a month “like clockwork”:
For transactional based law offices, most bills can and should be sent out once a month. Monthly billing maintains stable office cash flow and prevents client bills from aggregating charges beyond one month. Large unexpected bills are a “surefire” way to create unhappy clients who cannot or do not want to pay the larger bill for more than one month.
My experience is that clients of transactional based law offices expect to be billed once a month at the same time of the month and they consider irregular billing to be unprofessional.
Attorneys who send out bills once a month at the same time of the month always have a few bills that must be prepared other than at the end of the month. In my experience, some attorneys try to justify their chaotic billing practices because of these few non-monthly billing requirements, but this is just an excuse for not being serious about what it takes to run the business part of any law office.
Once you commit to monthly billing, you have to commit to billing on approximately the same day of the month.
Calendar month billing:
To most clients a normal billing period is a calendar month. I suggest going along with clients’ expectations. If you discuss a bill with your client, you will find it easier to refer to a bill as a January bill or a February bill.
If for some reason you cannot get your billing done on the last or first day of the month, the bill should include only fees, costs and payments posted during the calendar month. Any other billing practice will confuse your clients, your staff and you.
Billing at the close of a matter:
Although it is a good idea to get the final bill into the client’s hands as soon as possible, be sure you are prepared to write off any charges you discover after the final bill. Clients consider final bills to be final; the end of their monetary commitment to you. Reputation and referrals are very important in the private practice of law. You do not want to make a satisfied client less than satisfied for a couple hundred dollars.
