Introduction
When it comes to billing, invoices are more than a series of items. They are a powerful tool that shape client relationships, reduce disputes, and reflect the professionalism of your firm. Additionally, they also help your firm ensure that more of your billed hours are realized and paid. The key to obtaining these benefits is utilizing narrative descriptions as a means for effectively communicating, providing context, and avoiding ambiguity for all parties. However, law firms often face challenges with narratives, spending countless hours scrutinizing descriptions and having week-long training for new employees to fully understand them. Below, we share some advice on how to create narratives efficiently.
Communicate Clearly
While clarity is expected from most lawyers when drafting narratives, it's important to understand the level of clarity required to make them truly effective. Ensure that your narratives are written in simple but detailed language. Complex or "legalese" heavy narratives are difficult to understand for clients and can open room for misinterpretations of the work you completed. It is also a given that narratives should provide context in order to convey the purpose and value of the activity. Narratives with less detail often leave the client guessing as to why you performed a task and are more likely to be rejected. A clear but detailed narrative entry will build more trust, however it's important to be aware of the limits to transparency. Be sure that any privileged or otherwise confidential information is not included without the client's consent, as it is always best to respect the client's privacy with invoices that are often viewed by many individuals.
Show Value and Progression
A good practice to boost client satisfaction is to show value within narratives. Think of billing narratives as telling a story where each entry highlights a progression from a previous entry. For example, moving from an entry about research to an entry about strategy development shows progression and gives the client more confidence in your work. In some cases, it can even lead to clients being more willing to pay for your services as they seek to understand when and how the work was done.
It's essential to highlight the value of your services by clearly demonstrating the purpose and impact of every entry you record. Consider the client's goals and outcomes when writing narratives. Instead of saying "Reviewed contract", try "Reviewed contract to identify liability risks." Compelling action words can also be used to drive confidence, as words like "refined", "finalized" and "evaluated" are compared to more generic and empty terms such as "worked on".
A good strategy to combine both value and progression in your narratives is the verb-object-action writing approach. By using this format, you tell the client about what was done and why it was done, encompassing both the value and progression principles. When clients clearly see the value and progress of your work, they’ll have fewer reasons to question your entries and will be more inclined to approve your bills.
Meeting Client Standards and Needs
As the primary users of billing statements, the client's expectations and requirements for narratives should be met. While these do shift from company to company, there are general industry expectations and practices put in place to maintain a professional relationship between all parties. UTBMS (Uniform Task-Based Management System) is a set of billing codes that can be used to organize the billing process. If your firm decides to use these codes, it's important to match corresponding narratives to these codes. While the codes may have some meaning on their own, the narratives give them more context and provide a bigger picture for clients. For more information on the best billing code practices, check out this blog post we made.
Narrative consistency is also important for maintaining professionalism. If one employee writes narratives in a manner that is way different than another employee, confusion is bound to occur. A good way to establish consistency is to train employees in the proper etiquette of writing narratives and what the firm's standards for documenting are. Firms should also encourage employees to use objective and neutral tones to help keep narrative styles within a consistent company standard.
Billables AI - The Future of Narrative Writing
Billables AI is transforming the way law firms approach narrative writing and billing. With automated narrative writing as you work, Billables AI ensures that your narratives are clear, descriptive, and follow the legal industry standards. The platform adapts to its user's linguistic style over time, adapting to firm-wide preferences and client-specific requirements. Users can also edit and make changes to these entries, ensuring that your narratives are professional and client-ready.
That's not all! Billables AI also streamlines time tracking, client assignment, and matter management by capturing every detail of your work with ease. Billables AI is designed as the all-in-one tool for legal billing and helps ensure that you can save up to 30% of your billing time through our machine-learning AI platform.
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