The priority for most practice managers or partners is to maximise their fee revenue. The rush to achieve this goal can sometimes result in taking on clients or cases that do not actually deliver any margin. This happens when not enough information is shared across an organisation and crucial data gets lost, or is simply not accounted for as part of the final billing process. So what can managers, or indeed finance or administration staff, do to overcome this problem and ensure maximum profit from every job?

The manual approach

In the past, law firms have tried to address this challenge by using a manual approach – collecting costs such as 'time', 'court fees', and 'expenses' from a disparate range of sources, most of which are completely detached from the central accounting system. This is a slow, labour-intensive activity which, because of the duplication involved, can be prone to errors.

Another solution has been to achieve full integration by buying a whole suite of software applications from a single legal specialist. Typically these contain everything you need to run your practice including several modules from the main practice management system through to debt recovery.

If implemented correctly, these systems can significantly improve your overall efficiency by automating a number of common tasks such as client and case management, managing the practice diary, timesheets and debt recovery, while also providing a full legal accounting system.

But here's the rub; practice managers may not want to be tied into a proprietary solution that offers core competency in only one part of the practice 'mix'. Practice management system (PMS) vendors may provide considerable expertise in one or two areas of practice management, but to be an expert in all fields may be a claim too far.

An alternative is to pick the best of all worlds. Simply buy the best PMS, the best client relationship management and the best case management systems. But what about the integration for accounting purposes? Will you need dedicated IT staff to link the pieces together so you can extract all the relevant data?

The short answer is no. With some modern core accounting systems which are based on web technology, you can pool information automatically from all parts of the organisation in real time. With the right system, all the automation goes on in the background so the whole monthly billing process is far slicker, more accurate and can even be managed by non-finance staff.

It also means that the business intelligence is based on up-to-date data and can be tailored to the needs of different people across the organisation. For example, alerts can be automatically generated and emailed if a job is going over on time and a new customer quote needs to be raised.

Customer care

Operating a finance system in your practice is not just about billing. On the flip side, the information collated can also help to enhance customer service. Take, for example, a client that is experiencing a messy and emotionally distressing divorce, who needs to resolve the matter as quickly and painlessly as possible, but on a limited budget. These sorts of cases can often run and run if not checked, and the client could end up with a nasty shock in terms of costs if they are not kept fully aware of how the case is progressing.

If the legal expert has a tool that enables them to pull down costs regularly, to check the progress of the case, then they can report these findings back to the client, keeping them abreast of the financial situation thereby improving customer service by avoiding any nasty billing shocks at the end.

A similar method could be applied to legal aid cases, where the legal expert may have a limited amount of funding available for their client and therefore needs to apply this in the most cost-effective way to achieve the best result for them.

With advances in technology, it is now possible to put the finance system at the heart of your practice. This means you can ensure that all information is collected for the final invoice, you can analyse margins and therefore make a direct impact on your bottom line.

Simon Kearsley is managing director at Symmetry.