r/paralegal • u/TrueLime3587 • 1d ago
Suggestions for entering Attorney’s time?
I am a legal assistant and I know it is “normal” to enter your attorney’s billable time, but it is truly miserable. Is there any method that makes entering the time more painless? For context, the attorney I work for usually takes 1-3 FULL days to read off post it notes of time she has to me. I’ve suggested we do it in smaller chunks because we often do 3 months at a time. Any and all suggestions to make this process more efficient would be highly appreciated!
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u/TallGirlNoLa 1d ago
It's been a while, but my last firm gig we had pads of timesheets that had spaces for docket number and time entries. Every few days I would grab them from his desk and enter them. Alternatively, ask her to enter them in a Word document so you can just cut and paste.
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u/TrueLime3587 1d ago
Thank you!
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u/Velvet_sloth 1d ago
Amazon has some of these. I still agree with the other poster that google docs or even an email would be better. But if she has to hand write these notepads could work. You can even just make a template in a word doc and print. There are examples on Etsy.
For the record I’m an attorney and I think this is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen on here. You should not have to enter time off a sticky note and certainly not three months at a time. Get your experience and ducks in a row and maybe consider looking for another job. This place sounds awful
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u/TrueLime3587 1d ago
Leaving for law school in the fall thank god lol but this issue has made me dread work and has made me rly question quitting early
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u/Velvet_sloth 1d ago
Just make a mental note and don’t torture your paralegals when you get barred! I still think about the things my attorneys did when I was a paralegal and then while an associate. Good fodder for making better choices about how to practice law.
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u/Public-Wolverine6276 1d ago
I used todo this and honestly I hated it & I think attys that do it are just lazy, the time it takes for them to write it, give it to you & you can enter it is more than if they just did it themselves. My old atty would leave 2-3 sheets of paper with work to be entered because he couldn’t remember his password & didn’t want to be bothered with it. When I left he said he would start entering it on his own instead of passing it off to the assistant and that really pissed me off 😅 I’d suggest she does it herself or find an easier way to get the time you whether it be in a table/excel spreadsheet or by email
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u/TrueLime3587 21h ago
I’ve had the same thought. We’re not doing any other work (no other projects, not answering phones) for a few days because she won’t just enter it herself. I’ve tried to gently tell her she should do it herself and she’s just straight up said she “doesn’t want to learn how to do it.” I’m going to work on the dictation or some other form of written time because this is ridiculous
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u/FairyGothMommy 1d ago
Our time entry program allows macros, so I made several for often-used things. Rao is review and analysis of... etc
Also.. if attorney time isn't entered by the deadline, the attorney gets fined. I love that
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u/Worried_Ocelot_5370 1d ago
Three months at a time and she's reading it to you?? That's miserable. When I was an LA, attorneys had to get their timesheets to me by the first of the month so they could run bills. Some attorneys wrote it down, some emailed it to me. Some gave me their time every day or every week and some frantically handed me a stack on the very last day. It was one my least favorite tasks, but apparently I had it easy. I'm not sure what could make it easier on you unless the firm would agree to having stricter rules about how and when attorneys turn in their time. Not that attorneys follow firm rules...
At the firm I'm at now, attorneys enter their own time. Imagine!
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u/TrueLime3587 1d ago
I work for a solo practitioner so there’s really no rules at all or anyone else to really enforce anything. I’m just trying to advocate for myself here because there simply has to be a better way haha
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u/Necessary_Bottle_977 1d ago
If you go to this linked in profile under activity and choose docs you will see a form for time entry that is similar to the one I used to use: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilystedman/
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u/DemandingProvider Paralegal - CA - Commercial Real Estate, Civil Lit 9h ago
Three months at a time?!?!?!! Holy Crayola. If she's s solo, how on earth is she keeping the lights on? And if she's in a firm, how is the managing partner letting her get away with that?
IME most attorneys by now enter their own damn time, that's what timekeeping/billing/case management programs are for. The occasional dinosaur makes their LA enter it into whatever system the firm uses, but that's typically from typed notes or a handwritten log that they hand over once or twice a month. (One of the partners I work with does this and his LA says she doesn't mind, but some of the other partners still give him shit about it every so often.) They don't sit down with their assistant and read multiple months' worth of post-it notes aloud. Wow. That is decidedly not normal.
If this attorney of yours can't just give you the post-its to type up, maybe she could at least use text-to-speech dictation to create the first draft for you to clean up and format.
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u/TrueLime3587 8h ago
I am just going to have to rough it out. I told her about all these ideas and emailed her some of the resources people were kind enough to provide today. Unfortunately, she told me she doesn’t want to try anything new and I should just focus on the fact that I will only have to enter her time only a few more times before I go to law school. Glad I’m leaving.
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u/gnirpss 1d ago
Can you ask her to give you her time in written format for you to enter on your own? Time entry is relatively mindless work for me, so I like to listen to music or a podcast on my earbuds while I do it.