Results in 30 Days: How Scott D. Pollock & Associates Captured 15% More Time in Its First Month
When Michael Lazenby, Director of Operations at Scott D. Pollock & Associates, P.C., ran the numbers after his team’s first month with Billables AI, he assumed he had made a mistake. He checked his math again. The results held.
Scott D. Pollock & Associates is a Chicago firm that practices immigration law exclusively, across every area of the field. We spoke with Lazenby about how the first phase of the firm’s rollout delivered measurable results in just 30 days.
Hours That Measure More Than Revenue
The firm has grown significantly over the past decade, and its caseload has surged again recently as long-pending cases suddenly start moving forward.
For Lazenby, captured time does two jobs. It is how the firm generates revenue, and it is also how he gauges capacity: when hours hold at a certain level over time, that signals it may be time to hire and relieve pressure on the team. Incomplete time entries distort both pictures.
Before Billables AI, every timekeeper tracked time differently. Some entered it directly into the billing system as they worked. Others wrote it down by hand and spent at least a day at month-end retyping it. Others kept running spreadsheets or documents and copied entries over one by one. With a month-end deadline, Lazenby regularly heard timekeepers say they had been up until midnight entering time. And even the most diligent timekeeper leaves ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there uncaptured, which adds up quickly across a growing team.
Simple Enough to Start on Day One
Lazenby had seen demos of other timekeeping products, and many leaned heavily on buzzwords. Billables AI stood out for its clean, simple interface that he could see was doing complex work underneath, and for a team that explained everything plainly and applied zero pressure throughout the evaluation.
That simplicity mattered, because Lazenby would be introducing AI to a team that spans generations, from recent college graduates who use AI every day to experienced attorneys who were more skeptical.
“The Billables AI team explains things clearly and without the buzzwords. That matters, because I need to be able to explain it to our people, and they’ve made that easy.”
Michael Lazenby
Director of Operations
Start Small, Prove It Fast
Lazenby would like to see Billables AI across the whole firm. Rather than mandating a firm-wide change, he chose to plant the seeds and started with a core group of attorneys and paralegals, chosen to reflect a range of experience levels and comfort with AI. Starting August 1, Billables AI became their only method for entering time, giving the firm a clear, early read on what it could do.
Instead of reconstructing their day from memory or notes, timekeepers now review and edit draft entries Billables AI creates from their work, most of it document work, research, and email on their computers.
“Even just drafting something that someone has to edit saves time, because you’re not starting from scratch.”
The drafts still take editing, and Lazenby expects them to improve as Billables AI learns each person’s style. But midway through August, one timekeeper told him the tool was already helping capture more time. Lazenby decided to check the data.
30 Days to Proof
At the end of August, Lazenby compared each user’s hours against their average for the prior three months.
“Within 30 days, Billables AI increased the hours we captured per day by 15%, and by 30% for our attorneys. I’d recommend it without hesitation.”
Michael Lazenby
Director of Operations
That captured time is billable time the firm can now invoice, and the results validated the investment within the first month.
Results Before the Rollout
Today, Billables AI is integrated with Centerbase, the firm’s new practice management and billing platform. Approved time moves into billing with a single click. The integration is the product of a strategic partnership between Billables AI and Centerbase, with both teams working together so firms can capture, review, and bill their time in one connected workflow.
With that foundation in place, the next phase is bringing more of the firm on board, and Lazenby plans to let results lead the way. His goal is for the first group to become champions who show colleagues their own hours, because complete time is a win on both sides: the firm sees the full value of its team’s work, and timekeepers get credit for all of it.
“What made the difference was the experience. The product is simple, clean, and easy to use, and the people behind it are A+.”
