Commentary: The necessary evil of timekeeping

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Timekeeping. I can’t think of a single person who enjoys it. In fact, most hate it. But without it we wouldn’t get paid, so it must be done. And believe it or not, it’s actually a bit of an acquired skill.

How can counting every six minutes be an acquired skill?

It actually goes beyond the agonizing exercise of obsessing over how long it’s taking you to complete a project. It requires the discipline to mark the start of a project, mark interruptions, and mark end points. When you’re concentrating on learning a new job and meeting new people, along with managing pressures from clients or partners, it actually is a skill to be able to balance all of that and yet still keep track of your time.

So, as you work to improve this skill, it may be helpful to hear a few tips:

• Software – if your office has timekeeping software, use it. My office has Juris, and I love it. For each time entry, you fill in the client, write a description of the work then hit a little timer and it counts the time for you.
  This takes away some of that anxiety of “my gosh, this is taking me 30 minutes, now 40 minutes … 2 hours?” By putting the timer on you leave the counting to something else and you can focus on your project.

  Clearly, it’s still valuable to pay attention to how long a project is taking you since you need to manage the timing of projects, but at least it’s not constantly on your mind.

  An additional advantage is that you can stop the timer if you get up for coffee or if someone stops by your office.

  For me, it is the most accurate way to capture my time. Plus, at the end of the day, I simply review it, save it and it’s done.

• Timesheets – This is a great alternative if you don’t have the software or don’t want to enter your time yourself. Frankly, I didn’t even realize until coming to my current firm that someone had created a product that shows a breakdown of the day in six-minute intervals.

  The timesheet is nice because, again, you mark the start time, mark any breaks or interruptions, then mark your end time. It also is a good visual to track productivity. If you literally mark “talk with Frank – 10 minutes,” the visual helps you to be aware of how you can improve your use of time.

  The key to using the timesheets, however, is making sure that you write enough down in the description so that you don’t forget all of the details of the project. The other important element is getting the time entered into your timekeeping system daily.

  Most people either write enough of a description that their administrative assistant can enter their time into the timekeeping system or dictate the time and description based on the notes they made on the timesheet during the day.

  However your system works, make yourself finalize your timesheet every day before you leave, or make a rule that you can’t have that first cup of coffee or chat with a co-worker in the morning until it’s done.

• Procrastination – Procrastination rarely helps you, but in this case it can really hurt. I don’t care how smart you are, it is impossible to remember every detail of every minute for a day, let alone a week. I can barely tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday.

The true benefit to getting your timekeeping done immediately is that you capture much more than you would if you tried to recall everything. The vast majority of people underestimate their time when they go back to recreate it.

If you haven’t been doing this, try it. I assure you that timekeeping will be much less stressful and you will end up with more billable hours.

Second to last thought – it’s not just about your hours. As a young pup myself, I would get caught up in my hours and forget about the big picture.

This sounds simple, but this is how your office makes its money – your hours. It really is essential that you get it down accurately. When you compare it to, say, a grocery clerk, you would be shocked to see that clerk slide your Fruity Pebbles past the scanner and say, “It’s not really that important that I get that scanned today.” The same applies here.

One final thought – and this is a tough one – don’t cut your own time. Everyone has had a project that takes much longer than you would have liked. Write it down. Let the managing attorney decide how long the project should have taken. If you are reading this as a relatively new lawyer, then you likely don’t yet have a good handle on how long projects should take. Let those with a little more experience decide.

Timekeeping isn’t fun, but once you hone your skills a little, it is fairly painless.

Cindy L. Fryda who graduated from Marquette Law School in 2003, is a labor and employment attorney at The Schroeder Group S.C., Attorneys at Law. She started out working at a boutique labor and employment law firm, then she handled labor and employment issues for a $3.5 billion publicly traded company. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].