In a recent President’s Message, American Bar Association President, Linda Klein, discussed the ever prevalent issue that plagues attorneys: time management. She quoted Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as saying in 1999, “Certainly, life as a lawyer is a bit more complex today than it was a century ago.
Brenda Barnes, CPA
The ever increasing pressures of the legal marketplace, the need to bill hours, to market to clients, and to attend to the bottom line, have made fulfilling the responsibilities of community service quite difficult. But public service marks the difference between a business and a profession.” Almost a decade later, the same pressures continue to exist.
Ms. Klein traveled the country during her term as President-Elect asking lawyers what they needed most. They told her that the administrative burdens of running a law practice cut deeply into the time they have to actually practice law.
I would go even further to state that it is not only the time constraints required by the administrative burdens of running your practice, but also the cost associated with burdening yourself with these tasks. When the average partner billable hour is $408 per hour and the average amount of time to enter time, create client invoices, post client payments, reconcile your IOLTA accounts, pay your bills and reconcile your bank accounts can be on the average of 10 hours per month, the cost to attend to these duties can run a minimum of $4,080 per month. Annualize it and you are looking at $48,960 to attend to your billing and accounting duties! This does not include payroll items if you have an employee or the quarterly and annual tax items that must be managed. If you have your assistant handle these tasks, you still have a cost of $25,000-$30,000 for that time spent rather than having them bill his or her time!
B2 recognized this dilemma 8 years ago and has worked toward providing attorneys and law firms with an effective outsourced back office to handle their administrative burden. And now we are able to take our service one step further! We are very excited to announce the launch of the Plug and Practice model in 2017. This model will let you plug into the B2 infrastructure and receive time and billing software, accounting software and payroll and accounting services for a flat fee per attorney. We are leveraging our processes with technology and delivering an efficient and “burden -free” system.
The business of your practice just got easier! Call B2 and let us help.