Billing on the Move Means Value Doesn’t...

Any Time, Any Place Any Where. Billing on the Move Means Value Doesn’t Always Have to be Achieved From a Desk.

The end of the isolated working environments continues to evolve.  In its place there is a newly found trend for establishing closer working relationships.  This means that business travel and mobility, face-to-face meetings, flexible and home-office working as well as more open working environments are becoming the norm.

However, the rise of this new way of working – becoming mobile and more flexible – means that it becomes significantly harder to justify fees and billing for time out of the office.  Adam Coomber, VAIO Business, Group Product Manager at Sony United Kingdom Limited suggests that by effectively equipping practitioners with the right tools we can enable effective mobile and home-working meaning that more time can justifiably be billed.  
 
While mobile working began as a way for employees to work longer hours and for other employees to experience flexible working conditions, it has become a real business benefit.  In fact, for smaller businesses that are experiencing the squeeze from larger enterprises, they are seeing more need be on-the-road developing relationships and keeping clients happy while delivering maximum profit on time.  

Wherever they are, the ability for practitioners to work on the move overcomes capacity, flexibility and ‘always-on’ capabilities often used by larger firms to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Mobile working continues to be a growing trend.  Analyst firm Gartner Group recently predicted that by 2011, 46.6 million corporate employees globally will spend at least one day a week working away from the office, and 112 million will work from home at least one day a month . 

 In the UK alone, 3.4 million people (that’s 12 per cent of the working population) regularly or permanently work from home, according to the latest labour force survey from the Office for National Statistics.  With the legal profession in mind, it’s vital that a move towards a more mobile (client-facing and flexible) workforce does not end in competitive disadvantage, where legal professionals’ billing ratios drop and the ability to service an optimum number of clients diminishes. 

The legal profession is filled with telecommuters, albeit unwitting ones. Travelling lawyers who work out of hotels, their firms' branch offices, or the offices of local counsel are telecommuters. Litigators in court and transactional lawyers closing deals outside their own offices are also remote workers.Mobile working can increase work time, making legal professionals available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week wherever they are. At least partly because mobile working meets the needs of the workaholic tendencies many successful lawyers have.  For some firms, enabling client-facing employees to work effectively, while on the move, ensures they are available to clients as and when needed. Today, technology is available to ensure that legal professionals can complete work on the move, just as effectively as if they were in the office.  This means they are operating productively during the working day.

While all this heightened mobility is great news for many industries it specifically means more justifiable billing time for the legal profession.  With billing one of the longest contended issues for the legal profession is justifying mobile working as legitimate billable time, this can be tricky if practitioners don’t get it right.    The recently released ‘Stop the Clock?’ report by the Commerce and Industry (C&I) Group, investigating fees, revealed that there is an overriding concern that legal bills bear little relation to the value of the services that clients are receiving.  C&I Group London argues that fees are the single biggest issue the commercial profession currently has to face.  This is not helped by recent reports that US-based firms are hiking their prices for 2008 have shaken the market, and there is speculation that these rises will translate into the UK too.

It’s clear that the legal profession needs to rise to the challenge of justifying the time they spend on clients’ business.Mobility does not mean lawyers and legal professionals seclude themselves. Mobile working is not a constant state – there will be times when a lawyer needs to be in the office and at his or her desk.  Additionally, face-to-face meetings are no longer the exclusive or primary means of communication. Internet telephone (VoIP) conversations, e-mail, and voice mail substitute for many contacts that would otherwise be in person, serving as well or better. They enable lawyers to be in more frequent contact with other lawyers and clients, keeping them current without constantly interrupting them. Voice mail compels lawyers to be succinct. E-mail (because it is recorded information) may compel greater accuracy.

All these technological advances have meant that it is becoming easier for lawyers to justify billing for time they are working out of the office.  There are, however, some important considerations for legal firms that want to enable mobile working to ensure it happens securely, productively and profitably: 

Security:

Today security is a big issue for businesses and enabling employees to work remotely means they need to be able to do so securely.  Laptops today are equipped with the some of the most advanced security features which combat issues incurred by the age of mobile working.  When considering what equipment to buy businesses need to consider the following security issues:

The rapid growth of wireless, remote and mobile working is significantly impacting business security.  Today it is standard for businesses to buy laptops with wireless functionality and while this means that employees can stay connected in hot spot areas, it has bought with it increased risk of losing or leaking sensitive information.  The unsecured nature of Wi-Max and wireless hotspots have been blamed for many hacker attacks and means that for many businesses use is simply not feasible. This limits mobile working.  Instead, laptops should integrate uninterrupted mobile broadband via mobile phone networks that are far more secure.  This is increasingly important for the growing demand for teleconferencing and VoIP.

In addition, the rise of hardware theft means that thieves can easily access data stored on laptops.  For this reason, it is essential equipment is secure as possible through fingerprint recognition and protected hard drives as on the Sony VAIO.  With client confidentiality in mind, legal firms need to develop corporate policies and guidelines as to how best minimise security risks for an increasingly mobile workforce.

Accessibility: 

 Employees need to be able to contact customers, clients, partners and colleagues as well as access important files and business critical applications, no matter where they are - and they cannot be constrained by wireless hot spots.  Some laptops, for example the Sony VAIO TZ and SZ models, today offer embedded mobile (HSDPA) technology to allow the freedom for true and secure accessibility. With time being such an important profit line for legal firms and a cost for clients, it’s vital that legal professionals can constantly prove worth, both during those important face-to-face meetings and whilst providing advice and assistance flexibly and effectively, whilst they are out of the office. For example VAIO has teamed up with network partner T-Mobile in UK to offer customers the opportunity to experience high performance mobile broadband.

Availability:

 Battery life is a big issue – downtime can be at best embarrassing, at worst damaging to client relationships and case work.  The best laptops today offer over 7.5 hours life with a standard battery – it’s an important consideration for a profession that cannot survive profitably on downtime.

Going on current trends, mobility issues are being forced on every business sector, not just legal. Small practices can maximise the effectiveness of employees by providing the wireless technology that adds value to face-to-face meetings, allows flexible and home-office working and fosters more open working environments. Companies like Sony are committed to providing the mobile technology that enables newer more flexible ways of working to be adopted for a more efficient, effective and motivated workforce.

 Adam Coomber- Vaio Business Group Product Manager, Sony UK