Saving Law Firm Billables Begins With Automation

Automation just expanded.

The last time we checked in on Zero, the company had released a study outlining just how much billable time gets lost on non-billable administrative tasks. No one labored under the illusion that lawyers were maximizing their time, but the results of the study were still shocking. The plurality of timekeepers — 41.2 percent — felt they squander over 35 percent of their day on non-billable stuff.

At the time, I noted that “Zero helps with the email side, but there are others out there automating different tasks in the legal workflow.” It turns out Zero’s study might have offered some foreshadowing about the company’s future as it just announced the launch of Apollo, a solution that more or less takes what Zero has long done with your emails and extends it across your whole system.

Apollo offers the legal industry a new intelligent product that mimics human cognition by learning from users’ activities to produce accurate recordings of projects and billable time to drive higher client value and improve employee morale. According to ZERO’s latest legal industry survey published in August 2021, lawyers waste 30% of their time on non-billable admin tasks like tracking and reporting time – time that could be spent improving the quality of their work lives by focusing on practicing law.

Powered by AI, Apollo sees you read and respond to that email with the other members of the Project ZuckStaGram team — the new name was your idea! — and then navigate over to the draft agreement in the latest criminal settlement with your investment banking client — don’t worry, it’ll just be a small fine! — and then head over to read some research for the pro bono matter you’re working on — up until it impacts your bonus! The key is Apollo sits above all your existing systems and figures out what matter gets billed for what, logging it directly into your timekeeping software. It’s even capable of cross-referencing the client billing guidelines to cater the work description to their meaningless make-work exacting and important standards.

The point is Apollo aims to give timekeepers the tools to concentrate on the work that matters and not waste the estimated 700 hours per year a lawyer wastes on non-billable matters. And as good as that is for the bottom line, it’s also good for the lawyer’s well-being:

“We heard loud and clear from lawyers that they want a better work-life balance, and one way to provide that is freeing up their time spent on administrative tasks,” said Alex Babin, ZERO CEO. “With Apollo, the time they spend working on their desktops is automatically captured and entered into their billing software, meaning they don’t have to spend hours at the end of every day, week or month manually entering that time, when they could be watching their child play soccer or focusing on winning a case.”

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It’s quite the expansion from the humble email automation tool I first saw years ago. But, as they say, Black and Decker doesn’t sell drills, it sells holes. And Zero doesn’t sell email management, it sells workflow automation. Apollo is just the next step.

Earlier: Law Firms Waste Far Too Much Time On Non-Billable Work


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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