The hours that disappeared

Friday, 5 p.m. Forty lawyers open their calendars and inboxes and try to remember what they did on Tuesday. A call that ran long. Three emails on a lease. Half an hour on a draft. Some of it makes it into the system. A lot of it doesn't.

Picture a 40-lawyer firm with a strong book of clients. Time was rebuilt at the end of each week from memory and email. Pre-bills sat on partners' desks for two weeks. Invoices went out a month after the work, and some came back for breaking a client's billing rules. Clients paid in 60 to 90 days. Only 82% of the hours worked were ever billed. Write-offs grew every year, and nobody could say why.

What SBK rebuilt

SBK mapped how work turns into cash, from intake to collection. At $300 an hour, the hours that never reached a bill were worth about $3.5M a year. The rebuild captures time from where the work happens: email, calendar and documents. Each lawyer confirms the draft entries in seconds, the same day. Pre-bills are drafted and checked against each client's rules, then reviewed in one pass. Invoices go out the week the work is done. Reminders run on their own. Matter intake moved from a chain of emails to a single same-day step.

What moved

95% of hours worked were billed, up from 82%. Bills went out in seven days instead of thirty. Clients paid in 35 days, not 75. Partners went from eight hours of admin a week to two. More of the work became money, and the evenings came back.