Sample Attorney Billing Descriptions
How to make a Lawyer Billing Statement
If we talk about legal processes that most lawyers would wish to disappear, chances are that they’d choose billing and invoicing. Not only are they one of the most time-consuming tasks within a law firm, but they are also tedious and repetitive.
When it comes to legal services, lawyers not only strive to provide the best representation to their clients but also need to ensure that they are compensated appropriately for their time and expertise. That is what billing and invoicing processes are for.
Billing clients needs to be done accurately, transparently, and efficiently as a vital part of the lawyer’s practice.
To achieve this, lawyers often use sample attorney billing descriptions to clearly outline the services rendered and the corresponding fees.
Let’s explore a bit why attorney billing descriptions are necessary for your legal practice:
Why are Sample Attorney Billing Descriptions Important?
Sample attorney billing descriptions serve as detailed breakdowns of the legal services that were provided to the client. They ensure transparency and accountability in billing since they communicate the work handled by the lawyer. They also help establish trust between attorneys and their clients, as clients can review the descriptions and understand how the lawyer’s time was spent on legal duties.
Accurate and transparent billing descriptions benefit both you and your client. For instance:
- Well-done billing descriptions help justify the fees charged and avoid any potential conflict.
- Detailed billing descriptions can serve as a reference point for future cases, allowing lawyers to track their time and build a comprehensive database of their legal activities.
- Billing descriptions aid in running financial reports, analyzing billable hours, and identifying areas for improvement in terms of time management.
How to Prepare for Invoicing and Billing
In order to implement a good billing process, you need to follow some standards that will ensure that your law firm’s billing policy is as straightforward as possible.
According to MyCase, some steps should include:
- 💰 Setting up your Fees: Not too high, but not too low either.
- 🗣️ Proactively communicate with your clients: Explain your scope of services and essential details for invoicing and billing from the start, as well as other topics of concern (such as payment methods, schedules, etc.).
- ⌛ Capture every minute: Invoicing should track every minute spent on the duties for the case.
Though invoices vary from lawyer to lawyer, proper billing templates with all their necessary descriptions should include at least these basic elements:
- Details of your Law Firm and clients (names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mails)
- Date of Issue (the day the invoice goes out to the client)
- Itemized List of Services and Associated Costs
- Expenses (such as filing costs or court fees)
- Totals, Subtotals, and Taxes
- Statement Due Date and Penalty Late Fees (to know when clients are supposed to pay and in case they don’t fulfill the bill on time),
- Payment Methods
- Trust Account Balance and Details (in case your law firm manages client trust accounts)
Sample Billing Statement
Once you have taken into account everything that we have mentioned and combined it, your billing statement should look something like this (example provided by MyCase):
Another sample of billing statement, provided by edrawsoft:
And yet another one, if you want to take inspiration (this template, as well as others, can be found here).
If everything goes well and your sample billing description looks like the examples above, congratulations! You have graduated from the billing and invoicing process and are one step closer to making your law firm a successful business. Just make sure that you add your touch to those templates.
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