Billing.....

Today, I spent a large chunk of my morning with Mrs. Vaughn, the lady who deals with ALL the billing of the firm, including the corporate, probate, and trust/estate planing sections of the office. Billing is no easy job. It requires patience, organization, and a large chunk of time. However, it is so necessary to the motion of the firm as well as propelling new clientel to seek out the firm's legal counsel. Mrs. Vaughn took me through different parts of billing. Each lawyer/parallegal in the office at the end of each day turns in a time sheet to Mrs. Vaughn, containing all the hours they have spent providing services for different clients. At the end of each month, Mrs. Vaughn takes all these sheets and enters each part into her system, creating complex bills for different clients with all the services provided, and the total amount of money being billed for those services. The different members of the office have different billing rates, the veterans having a higher billing rate than the newcomers. Once the bills are entered into the system with the correct information, these are considered the rough drafts of the bills and are printed out to be revised by the lawyers. After they are returned, the lawyers either indicate that they be sent after their changes are made or that they be HELD for the next month of billing. An interesting part of the billing, is that a courtesy credit is often given to clients, deducting up to $1000 off a bill. This credit is a nice little present, but also, an unspoken agreement that the firm will continue referring their client for business if the client in return refers them also. She not only deals with billing, but also with any checks sent out of the office and also the firm's continental credit card in which all expenses work related are charged. All the bills are then checked for correct correlation. Mrs. Vaughn pulled out a huge stack of papers and I thought that this was the credit card papers for the entire year, but it ended up just being for a month!!

Once again... paper work dominates everything.