Lerners Lawyers

Before Laurel

Lerners LLP has long prided itself on creating an environment that enables its 400+ timekeepers to deliver on their commitment to exceptional client service. Yet, the firm still relied on manual time tracking, putting a mental and administrative burden on them each day. 

After Laurel

Laurel has enabled Lerners to better deliver on its commitment to its lawyers and its clients. By saving lawyers time and allowing them to focus on their work, it has increased timekeeper wellbeing. It has also improved client trust through enhanced timesheet granularity.

The Impact of Laurel

For Lerners LLP, culture and commitment aren’t just abstract concepts. The esteemed Canadian law firm has been successfully representing clients across a wide variety of practice areas for nearly a century. Along with providing exceptional client service, the firm prides itself on creating an environment that enables its 400+ timekeepers to succeed.

To that end, leaders at the firm set out to find a modern timekeeping solution that would help relieve the mental and administrative burden of its then-current manual time tracking approach. In order to truly prioritize timekeepers’ productivity and happiness, optimizing timekeeping was an obvious next step.

The firm chose Laurel because it shifts the time tracking paradigm. Laurel tells timekeepers what they did at work instead of them having to account for their activity. Lerners became the first law firm in Canada to implement it and immediately began to see impressive results.

Timekeepers Champion the Change

Because lawyers are the ones who most strongly feel the burden of manual time capture, they were the first timekeepers who embraced the opportunity to try Laurel. For them, it was clear from day one that Laurel had the potential to make a massive difference on their well-being by:

• Logging all of their billable activities across the applications that they use with smart capture, helping them to focus on their work
• Uniquely leveraging AI to categorize and describe these activities, saving time by assigning these tasks to Client Matters
• Intuitively displaying these activities in chronological order, making it easy to understand how they spend their time.

Laurel Ensures No Effort Is Wasted

With its superior time capture, Laurel comprehensively logged more billable activity for Lerners’ attorneys. Within one month of using the software, their average daily billable hours increased by 5%. These lawyers could ensure that more of their work was reflected in the time that they billed, helping them to meet their annual targets.

For the firm, the additional billable time directly translated to increased revenue—so much so that it took just one day of time tracking with Laurel to cover a lawyer’s monthly license fee for the software. And that’s just the difference a single day makes; looking at the annual revenue projections for Lerners, the benefits of the software became even more pronounced.

“You’re already working hard. This makes it easier for you to demonstrate that internally.” – Andrew Murray, Partner, Lerners LLP

Improved Granularity, Improved Client Trust

Laurel also greatly enhanced timesheet granularity, enabling lawyers to record an average of 40% more entries per day. It also provided added context for each entry, automatically creating a clear narrative and accurately assigning tasks to matters with its AI.

This improved financial hygiene set the firm up to deliver on its commitment to its clients, gaining their trust by generating more detailed invoices. It also enabled lawyers to better understand how they’re using their time so that they could focus on their priorities and deliver the best possible outcomes to their clients.

Accelerating the WIP-to-Cash Cycle

As leaders at Lerners found, having more complete, granular entries brought another major benefit: lawyers were able to release their time faster. On average, billing velocity increased by 15%.

This helped to provide a better sense of the value that these attorneys were delivering and enabled the finance team to send out invoices sooner, shortening the WIP-to-cash cycle. 

“I don’t have to worry about timers. I’ve gotten used to just working.” – Jennifer Hunter, Partner, Lerners LLP

A Timely Transformation for a Trusted Firm

Adopting Laurel has helped Lerners to deliver on its commitment to both its lawyers and clients. By eliminating the burden of manual time tracking with Laurel, the firm is putting its people first—not only creating a culture that values their well-being but also helping them to spend their time with more intention. 

Leaders at the firm are also building stronger relationships with their clients than ever before—all while realizing a compelling return on investment. For Lerners, there’s no question that automation is the future of timekeeping, and no one is looking back.