In the competitive world of legal practice, efficiency is key to staying ahead. Law firm owners often seek ways to optimize their processes and make data-driven decisions that improve client service and profitability. One often-overlooked area is time tracking, especially when it comes to potential new clients. By effectively tracking this time, law firms can gain valuable insights that lead to more strategic decision-making.

Why Tracking Time with Potential Clients Matters

For many law firms, time tracking is primarily associated with billable hours and active clients. However, tracking the time spent with potential new clients—whether they hire your firm or not—can provide crucial data. This information helps law firm owners understand where their time is going and whether that time is translating into new business.

Accurate time tracking for potential clients allows you to assess the efficiency of your consultation process. Are you spending too much time on consultations that don’t result in new clients? Are certain attorneys more effective in converting potential clients into paying ones? These are the kinds of questions that detailed time tracking can help answer.

Leveraging Clio for Time Tracking

One of the most effective tools for law firms to track time with potential clients is Clio, a popular practice management software. If you’re using Clio Grow or another intake software that lacks time-tracking capabilities, don’t worry. You can still track this vital information using Clio Manage.

Start by creating a dedicated matter in Clio Manage, labeled “Potential New Clients” or something similar. This matter will serve as a central hub for all time entries related to potential clients. Whether you’re conducting a consultation, doing pre-consultation research, or following up afterward, log all these activities under this matter. This approach ensures that you capture every minute spent on potential business opportunities.

Best Practices for Time Entries: Include Client Names

To maximize the usefulness of your time tracking, it’s essential to include the names of the potential clients in the description of each time entry. This small detail makes it much easier to later identify how much time was spent on a specific potential client. For example, if you need to analyze the time spent on consultations that didn’t result in new clients, you can quickly pull up all entries related to those specific individuals.

Including client names also helps if you decide to analyze patterns or trends in your firm’s intake process. Are certain types of clients requiring more time? Is there a particular stage in the consultation process where clients decide not to move forward? By having detailed time entries, you can answer these questions with confidence.

Managing Time Entries for Clients Who Hire

When a potential client decides to hire your firm, it’s important to transfer their time entries from the “Potential New Clients” matter to the new matter created for their ongoing legal work. This process allows you to maintain a clear distinction between time spent on clients who hire your firm and those who do not.

For law firm owners, this method of managing time entries provides two significant benefits: it keeps your records organized and ensures that the data you’re analyzing is accurate. By isolating time entries for clients who didn’t hire you, you can perform a more focused analysis on why certain consultations aren’t converting, helping you refine your intake process.

Using Data to Drive Decisions

The ultimate goal of tracking time with potential clients is to gather actionable data that can inform your business decisions. For instance, if you discover that a significant amount of time is being spent on consultations that don’t result in new business, you might consider implementing a consultation fee. Alternatively, you might decide to allocate consultations to attorneys who have higher conversion rates.

This data can also inform decisions about your staffing and resource allocation. Should one attorney handle all consultations, or would it be more effective to spread them across multiple attorneys? The answers to these questions lie in the data you gather through diligent time tracking.

For law firm owners focused on maximizing efficiency and improving their firm’s profitability, tracking time with potential clients is a powerful yet often underutilized strategy. By using tools like Clio and following best practices for time tracking, you can gather valuable data that informs better business decisions. Whether it’s optimizing your consultation process, deciding whether to charge for consultations, or improving client conversion rates, the insights you gain from effective time tracking can give your law firm a competitive edge.

Start implementing these strategies today and watch your firm’s efficiency—and bottom line—improve. If you need help setting up time tracking in your practice management software, reach out to us at streamlined.legal. We specialize in helping law firms like yours get the most out of their practice management tools.