Why your billing controls don't work
A firm I spoke to recently is introducing more billing control. Its clients prohibit block billing, so it set up an automated check: any time entry with a semicolon gets flagged before it goes out.
The lawyers started using commas.
It is a small story, but I have heard versions of it at almost every firm I have spoken to this year. Firms have invested in billing controls. Those controls mostly did not work as hoped and the reason was not lawyers being difficult.
Four controls and the limits of each
Most firms rely on some mix of the same four lines of defense. Each has a predictable weak spot.
Keyword and format checks. They catch the semicolon, not the block billing. Block billing comes in several forms, and a rule that checks punctuation only teaches people which punctuation to avoid. The same goes for banned words: swap “review” for “consider” and the check passes while the client still cuts the time.
Guideline links at time entry. Many firms attach the client’s guidelines to the matter so lawyers can check them as they record time. One billing lead told me, with some resignation, that nobody clicks them. A 40-page PDF is not a control.
Pre-bill (or pro forma) review. This is where firms expect to catch whatever got through, but month end is the worst possible moment to do it. Reviewers are racing to get bills out the door, the time is weeks old, and the rush leaves no room to fix problems properly. In practice, the fixing falls to a small billing team, often exporting to spreadsheets and re-keying corrections by hand. Plenty still slips through and is only found when the client rejects it. More on this in our next article…
Rejection data. Some firms are trying to manually log every rejection and reduction to stop the same problems happening again. It’s the right instinct. The limit is that there’s no systematic way to do it. Rejections arrive by email, portal and phone call, get logged inconsistently, and the lessons rarely make it back into the checks. So the same rejections come back again next month.
Block or warn? It’s a trap!
When a control isn’t working, the instinct is to make it harder. Turn the warning into a hard block. Stop the entry until it’s fixed.
That is when the resistance starts. One firm described rolling out hard blocks as a close race over who hated it most: partners, associates or the billing team. Another heard a senior partner say he had written time entries the same way for 40 years and wasn’t about to change. Worst of all, some lawyers simply stop entering their time. One large international firm switched on hard blocks, then reached month end to find a good chunk of its lawyers hadn’t recorded any time at all. The blocks were turned off in a hurry. Unrecorded time is revenue a firm never even gets the chance to bill.
So most firms end up back with warnings, and warnings get ignored. The corrections drift back to the billing team, who manually fix them before the invoices go out. One billing manager told me that in 16 years, exactly one lawyer had ever followed up on a rejected entry of their own accord.
Nobody in this story is behaving badly. Lawyers want to record time and get back to client work. Billing teams want invoices paid. The control just sits in the wrong place for both of them.
The real problem: checking the form, not the meaning
Strip away the specifics and the same two flaws show up every time.
First, most controls check how an entry is written, not what it says. Clients don’t reject semicolons. They reject time that bundles several tasks so they can’t judge each one. A narrative can pass every format rule and still describe exactly the kind of work the client refuses to pay for. Equally, a perfectly acceptable entry can trip a keyword filter and waste everyone’s time.
Second, the checks are generic while the rules (and their enforcement) are not. The same entry is fine for one client and a write-down for another. A control that applies one firm-wide rulebook will always be too strict for some clients and too lax for others, and lawyers learn quickly which warnings they can ignore.
Add the timing problem, with most review happening at pre-bill, and you have controls that are imprecise, generic and too late.
What a control that works looks like
The firms getting this right have changed what they check, not how hard they enforce it.
They read entries the way the client’s reviewer will. The question isn’t “does this contain a semicolon?” but “would this client accept this narrative?” That means judging meaning, not matching patterns.
They apply each client’s rules, not one firm-wide list. Including the unwritten ones, learned from that client’s past reductions.
They fix problems as soon after entry as possible. The closer to the point of entry, the cheaper the fix: the work is fresh and the lawyer remembers what they did. Three weeks later, at pre-bill, the same fix takes an email chain.
They explain and suggest, rather than block. “This client cuts entries that bundle tasks; here is the same entry split in two” gets fixed. A red error message gets worked around.
They learn from history. Every rejection, reduction and appeal is a record of what each client really enforces. Firms that feed that history back into their checks get sharper every month. Firms that don’t take the same write-downs again next year.
No billing team can do this by hand, across every entry and every client. The firms getting it right use technology to multiply their people, so that expertise reaches every entry, not just the ones someone had time to read.
Three questions to ask your team this week
Which of your billing controls check the format of an entry, and which check whether the client will actually accept it?
Do your controls apply each client’s rules, or one set of rules to every client?
Who really fixes non-compliant entries at your firm, and how many hours a month does it take them?
If the honest answer to the last one is “the billing team, and a lot”, your controls are working as a to-do list for them, not as a control.
If you’re working on this at your firm, I’d be glad to compare notes. Bonus points for semicolon usage.
This is the first in a short series on where law firm revenue leaks between time entry and payment. Next up: Compliance at pre-bill (or pro forma) is too late.
