Wright Lindsey Jennings

Deploying some form of capture is better than relying on old-school manual timekeeping. Yet for one long-established, well-regarded Arkansas law firm, good enough was not, well, good enough.

Wright Lindsey Jennings (WLJ) first began offering legal services to Little Rock area residents back in 1900. Throughout its history, the firm has regarded thoroughness, proactivity, and building strong relationships with clients as its core values. 

“We strive to be the kinds of people our clients are proud to work with, both personally and professionally.”

By empowering its timekeepers to record billable time as effortlessly and confidently as possible, the firm walked its talk for its clients by partnering with Laurel.

Before Laurel

WLJ’s implementation of legacy timekeeping software was not garnering the results the firm hoped to achieve. The swelling volume and complexity of client matters and related issues were making those six-minute increments feel overwhelming. 

Plus, there was still too much scrambling and administrative effort to engender enough trust in the software among WLJ’s timekeepers to readily adopt it. For a firm whose attorneys consistently rank as some of the best in the country, it was critical to get roadblocks out of the way and help them do their best work. 

The firm’s leaders decided to switch to a solution that would help enhance timekeeper wellbeing while boosting revenue and helping strengthen client relationships.  

Exploring Laurel 

WLJ began exploring Laurel as a replacement timekeeping solution in the fall of 2021. Following a simple weeks-long implementation cycle, a test group of timekeepers used the system regularly for nine months. 

The firm’s long-game commitment allowed sufficient time for Laurel’s machine learning technology to absorb its timekeeping practices and related data points, and learn to enrich billable work with narratives, Client Matters, and PT codes. 

All of this was performed in the background while attorneys focused on their work without having to worry about keeping time. 

The Laurel Difference

By the summer of 2022, the freedom and confidence Laurel could offer became apparent.

“The results are in! Laurel is making us money!”

A detailed business impact analysis by the Laurel team revealed that users at the firm:

Recover an average of 48 minutes a day 

That number stands in comparison to their use of Aderant Expert Time and to timekeepers using neither technology. 

One that can potentially generate $45,000 in new annual revenue. 

Per timekeeper.

Release 25 percent more time entries a day

Laurel is installed at the operating system-level to collect billable time and extends an invisible hand as timekeepers perform their substantive work. 

The system automatically generates the associated time entries in fine detail, ties them to specific matters and task codes, and displays them chronologically on Timeline and as a bill on Timesheet. 

Timekeepers review their entire day in digestible form, with exact time blocks recorded. For WLJ users, that means freedom from guesstimation and the six-minute ball-and-chain.

Increase their billing velocity by 17 percent

Because the timesheets created by Laurel are review-ready with all entries properly categorized, time gets into the billing system faster.

“Speeding up the billing cycle is one of the best ways to improve the billing realization rate, which is the amount we collect as a percent of the amount we bill.”

A lot can happen in six minutes. How will you maximize it?

These impressive metrics assured the leaders of WLJ that Laurel could well change their firm’s culture and increase their bottom line. 

The firm has seen the rapid pace of improvement in the product and looks forward to planned updates that would allow attorneys to bill more time in less time. 

“Those pesky emails, create a lot of 0.1s that can scoop up another chunk of billable time each.”

WLJ recognized revenue leakage and timekeeper stress as functions of its timekeeping challenges. 

By investing in Laurel and trusting the potential of machine learning to transform the collection of billable time and generate detailed and accurate time data, the firm is now in a better position to serve its clients and promote the well-being of its timekeepers. 

Laurel is on a mission to collect your lost time and restore it so you can enjoy newfound freedom, confidence, and trust. Let us show you how.