Bill4Time has expanded into practice management software, bringing along its experience of tracking time and billing for law firms.

Seattle and Pittsburgh-based Bill4Time was acquired by private equity firm Alpine Investors in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. Earlier this month, Alpine combined practice management software company PracticePanther and Bill4Time into ASG LegalTech, according to the ABA Journal. 

However, Bill4Time product manager Patrick Vernallis said Bill4Time and PracticePanther will still work as independent brands.

As Bill4Time settles into its new corporate structure, it has ventured into uncharted waters: practice management. After studying the legal industry market and listening to users' feedback, Bill4Time discovered users sought more metric measuring abilities and client communication features, Vernallis said.

What it is: Bill4Time's practice management solution is a cloud-based tool for law firms to track firm metrics, performance goals, client invoices, and reviews and other customizable features.

Vernallis noted the software also contains Bill4Time's “bread and butter” billing options and analytics that law firm customers have grown accustomed to since the company's 2006 inception.

How it works: Bill4Time has a customizable dashboard that can record hourly rates, recent time entries, resource utilization, unpaid clients, daily schedules and other tasks.

Users can also track billable hours and set a billable hours target for a matter. The hours goal can be split between actual work hours and other hours used to market and gain clients, Vernallis noted.

For these dashboard features, users can add specific lawyers or staff members and track their progression individually.

The software also houses specific tabs regarding a user's projects, clients, time and expenses, tasks, scheduling, invoicing, reporting and accounting.

Specifically, the client tab allows users to monitor individual client billing, including the balance and what it was billed for. Similarly, the invoice table enables a user to create invoice templates for clients.

In addition, the tasks tab allows users to set a workflow, including the scheduled and required tasks to complete matters. The tasks can be edited and applied to other matters with similar assignments, Vernallis noted.

Client portal: Currently, Bill4Time's client-facing portal lets users view and pay their legal bill. Clients can also pay via Stripe, LawPay, PayPal or by credit card. 

Lawyers can also send an automated message to clients requesting feedback on their services and request they leave a review on Google. 

Vernallis said Bill4Time plans to expand the automated online review requests to Facebook and Avvo and include document-sharing capabilities between clients and lawyers. The company noted it will continue to expand the portal to meet customer demands in the future.

“We've seen in the marketplace a growth and need for client engagement,” Vernallis noted. “We want to build out our portal to enhance that.”

Competition: Bill4Time's competitors include legal practice management platforms Clio, MyCase, Rocket Matter and CosmoLex.

However, Vernallis believes that Bill4Time differentiates from others due to its accounting and billing expertise. 

He noted that Bill4Time's reporting metric can conduct unique calculations in-house, such as computing billing on complex origination fees. Users can then send that request to Bill4Time's developers and “take the secrecy out of how lawyers are paid in their firms.”