Law Firms Bill the Work They Do When Every Hour Is Captured Same Day
The AgentWorks Time Entry Agent takes time capture off your attorneys' evenings. Throughout the day it watches calendar events, emails, calls and document activity, drafts time entries with descriptive narratives, flags entries that fall below the firm's minimum increment, and sends each timekeeper an end-of-day reminder for anything still unrecorded. Your attorneys spend the day with clients and confirm their time with a quick review.
What it takes off your plate
Every attorney knows the Friday afternoon ritual. You open the timesheet, look at a week of calendar entries, and try to remember what that call on Tuesday was about and how long the redline really took. The short calls, the quick email answers and the document reviews done between meetings mostly never make it in. The entries that do are thin: "review file" or "telephone call with client."
Then comes pre-bill review. The billing partner sends entries back for better descriptions, the attorney rewrites them from memory, and invoices go out late. Clients who receive vague narratives question the bill. The firm is already working against a tight number: lawyers bill an industry average of just 33% of their workday, roughly three hours of billable time per day. Unrecorded work makes it worse.
What the Time Entry Agent does, step by step
It starts with the communication that keeps time current.
- Sends the end-of-day reminder. Each evening, the Time Entry Agent sends each timekeeper a short list: the draft entries waiting for approval and the activity it found with no entry, such as a call with a client or an email thread on a matter.
- Asks the one question it needs. When it cannot tell which matter an activity belongs to, it asks the attorney directly instead of guessing.
- Follows up before pre-bill. Before the billing cycle closes, it reminds anyone with unreleased time and tells the billing team what is still outstanding.
Then the Time Entry Agent does the data work:
- Captures activity. It reads calendar events, sent and received email, logged calls and document edits, and links each to the client and matter.
- Drafts entries with narratives. Each draft entry carries a specific description written from the activity itself: the document reviewed, the issue discussed, the party on the call. The kind of narrative a client accepts on first read.
- Flags increment problems. Entries below the firm's minimum billing increment, or blocks that look inconsistent with the activity, are flagged for the attorney to correct.
- Posts to billing. Approved entries go into Clio or your billing system against the right matter, ready for pre-bill.
When clients do question an invoice, the Billing Inquiries Agent answers from the same entries.
Where the work is recorded
Every draft, reminder and approval the Time Entry Agent handles is logged against the timekeeper and the matter. Approved entries sit in your billing system with the narrative and the activity they came from, so the billing partner can see why an entry exists. The reminders and the attorney's answers are kept on the matter too, which makes pre-bill review a check rather than a rewrite.
When an attorney opens their queue the next morning, they see yesterday's drafts ready for approval and any activity still unassigned. The billing team sees which timekeepers are current and which are not, without sending a single chasing email.
What your people do instead
Your attorneys spend the day practicing law: in client meetings, on calls, in court. They confirm their time with a quick review instead of an evening of reconstruction. The billing partner reviews substance, not spelling, and invoices go out on time.
Clients get bills they can read and understand, with each entry describing the work in terms they recognize, which means fewer disputes, fewer calls to the billing team and faster payment. The attention that used to go into timesheets goes back into client service. For how the firm keeps new clients moving from the first call, see the engagement letter follow-up post.
One next step
If time in your firm still gets reconstructed at the end of the week, take the free Legal Industry Assessment. It shows which workflow an agent should take first. You can see every legal agent AgentWorks runs on the Legal industry page.
See where the Time Entry Agent would start in your legal business.
I'm Victoria, the Legal ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
Victoria replies from legal@agentworksstudio.com. One email with the link — no list, no drip, unless you ask for the weekly letter. Or go straight there →