Always Be Selling -- Even When Billing
Use regularly submitted invoices as a way to impress and reassure clients and create an opportunity to address their concerns, columnist John Balestriere advises.
Use regularly submitted invoices as a way to impress and reassure clients and create an opportunity to address their concerns.
As noted in an earlier column, litigation is a strange world to most clients, with its own language and rules. Litigators should not expect even the most sophisticated of non-lawyer clients (or whomever benefits from their services) to understand a complex memorandum of law, what a protective order is, or what the difference is between “noticing” a deposition or using a subpoena to get someone to sit for a deposition (you notice parties, those actually in the suit; you use subpoenas ad testificandum for non-parties). Transactional lawyers have specialized and esoteric knowledge too, and also should not expect their clients to understand everything in a securities offering or even a complex purchase and sale agreement. All lawyers need to be teachers to their clients about all of this (and more about that in a future Litigation 101. But do not expect even bright, interested, sophisticated non-lawyer clients to understand everything you write.
It’s completely different with your bills. Do expect clients to want to and need to understand – and focus on – your invoices. But rather than whining about entering your hours on a timely basis (do it every day you work, ideally as the day proceeds), proofreading invoices (edit it the way you would a court filing), or moaning that the client doesn’t appreciate that, yes, a good letter distinguishing authority to a careful judge could indeed take hours to write, use invoices as an opportunity to impress your clients about your work, reassure them that you are providing them service worth their trust (and, for paying clients, money), and force communication with them about what is going on in their matters.
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IMPRESS THE CLIENTS
American lawyers may be the highest-paid writers on the planet. It’s our clients (or, in the case of government lawyers or non-profit lawyers, taxpayers or donors) who pay for this. As noted above, though, we should not demand that our clients appreciate good legal writing, whether in argument or a deal document. But when they pay attention to anything we write – like invoices – they should demand the invoice follow general good rules of writing, hopefully making the client believe that’s how all your writing is. Be clear in expression. Get rid of typos. Be organized. Use consistent abbreviations. Make sure there’s no confusion about which timekeeper performed which work. If work is non-billable, for whatever reason, ensure the reader of the invoice will understand that.
If we ensure that our invoices conform to these basic rules and other rules that apply to higher standards of writing, we will impress the client and make it that much easier to convince her that we are doing a good job in all that work she may not understand.
REASSURE YOUR CLIENT
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Even if you have daily calls with your clients in an intense period of work, you still are doing nearly all of your work without the client sitting there next to you, looking over your shoulder. If you provide detailed invoices you let the client know what time you are spending on the case and what all the money is paying for. Do not write “Motion to dismiss” with an 8.0 hour entry (note: be careful about round entries to begin with; if you really spent exactly 2.0 hours on an assignment, fine, enter that, but too many round entries makes a client think that you’re just guessing, and probably rounding up). Instead, take just a bit more effort to let the client know how you spent that day:
“Research applicability of res judicata to claim of fiduciary duty; discuss with [name/initials of colleague] specific appellate division decision on res judicata; draft brief in support of motion to dismiss; provide draft to supervisor.”
That takes longer than “Motion to Dismiss” – but not a lot longer. And it reassures the client that you’re doing real work.
COMMUNICATE WITH THE CLIENT
Invoices also bring about communication with the client. A client who reads the appropriate motion to dismiss entry in my example in the last section may ask, “What’s this ‘res judicata’”? and then ask you about it. Maybe the client will read the phrase, not understand, not care, and then move on. But a client who does care may email you about this, giving you the opportunity to communicate with the client in a way you would not have had if you did not provide an adequately detailed, clear invoice. And that communication will help achieve two of the other goals good invoicing can provide: you can impress the client (showing that it makes sense to entrust his matter to you since this really is not something a non-lawyer can do) and reassure the client (letting the client know you are appropriately analyzing the client’s problem).
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These three goals – impressing, reassuring, and communicating with your clients – obviously are not the primary, or only, goals of an invoice. The primary goal of an invoice is to receive fair and prompt payment for your valuable services. But most of us need always to work at convincing our clients to hire us and our colleagues rather than the lawyers upstairs or across the street. Good invoicing allows us to always be selling, while serving our clients and getting paid.
John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at [email protected].
