HOUR BY HOUR
Your billing narratives are the most granular record your firm produces
Nobody thinks of time entries as an asset. But they are a description of what was actually done, written by the person who did it, against a specific matter, at a level of granularity nothing else in the firm approaches.
THE TIME-RECORD QUESTIONS
What firms ask about billing data
Our narratives are terse and unhelpful.
Common, and it lowers the value of that particular source rather than ruling out a deal. Breadth across other systems usually compensates.
This exposes how long things really took us.
The data is anonymized and built into general data sets. Nothing is listed, and we do not disclose which labs take which data.
Can we include narratives without the amounts?
Scope is yours to draw. Firms frequently license the descriptive narrative while excluding the commercial figures.
Do you need our billing system itself?
No standing access. It is a one-time extract of what the licence names.
WHY TIME DATA IS UNUSUAL
Four properties nothing else in the firm has
- Granularity. Work is described in units of hours rather than engagements, which shows the actual shape of how a problem was attacked.
- Authorship. The description is written by the practitioner, not summarised upward by someone who was not there.
- Effort is attached. Each described task carries how long it actually took, which is information about difficulty.
- Sequence is preserved. You can follow a matter through in the order it was genuinely worked, not the order it was reported.
SPEAK WITH A MANAGING PARTNER
The entries everyone resents writing have a value
Six questions and a short conversation. Nothing you tell us leaves Polyshares.
Check your data