Have a hard time preparing your bill documentation? Always get hit by the audit team for billing mistakes? Most companies these days hire legal billing services to process and audit legal bills. That’s one way to tighten the belt and keep costs low. That’s probably because for most legal companies, discrepancies in legal bills often cause money to go down the drain.
In an attempt to keep financially fit and healthy, these companies are now cracking down on such discrepancies to make sure not a single errant coin is pocketed by other hands, whether through subterfuge or a careless, honest mistake. Here are some of those mistakes as pointed out by LegalCareers:
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Vague billing descriptions. This one’s a common error. So instead of putting a vague task that could be misconstrued in the worst possible way, simply write down the task or activity you accomplished, the time you finished and started, how valuable the project is and the total fee you’re charging, among other things.
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Bogus hours. If you still haven’t delivered on the billing requirements of your company, then it might be a bit tempting to simply add bogus hours to your bills just to meet those requirements. However, this could put your reputation on the line if the audit team catches you in the slip, especially if the bogus hours you added don’t reflect the quality of the work or complexity of the work you supposedly accomplished. Do you really want to risk ruining your reputation for something like this? Trust in the business is hard to come by. Once you lose it, you might find yourself in a tight spot. The best way to avoid that scenario is to make sure you file your hours right.
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Review. Some clients might refuse to pay for your fee if they see that you’ve billed them a number of hours you spent reviewing and revising a brief. Regardless of how long the brief was, how difficult and complex, how extensive your research, your client might not see it that way. To avoid any further complications, simply rewrite your description. Instead of saying you revised the brief, say you assessed the information, analyzed it or investigated it further for errors and flaws.
The next time you file your legal bills, make sure you avoid these mistakes. That or hire legal billing services to help you out, especially if you’ve got your legal bills in a tangle. That’s the fastest and most convenient way to get your billing back in order.
Omneity Billing offers legal billing services. Book an appointment with us. Call us today for more on what our team can offer you.
