Time Capture

In a given day an average timekeeper touches 59 emails, takes 8 internal calls, makes 4 external calls, receives 1 external call, has two appointments on the calendar, surfs the internet and actually spends some time thinking.  To further complicate it, the work is spread out over multiple matters/projects.  No wonder everybody hates keeping their time. Living your professional life in six minute increments must be its own special torture.

Till the advent of time capture technology, the industry best practice for timekeeping was “contemporaneous” timekeeping.  Meaning, if you write down your time as it happens you will book more time.  But, only 35% of timekeepers behave this way.

What about the other 65%?  What do they do?  If contemporaneous timekeeping increases booked hours why wouldn't’t everybody do it?   Ask a few timekeepers why they don’t keep their time contemporaneously and you’ll hear:  “my day is too hectic,”  “it breaks my rhythm,” “I prefer to do administrative tasks on off hours” to “I lack of discipline.”

This group employs a “Reconstructive Methodology” to prepare their timesheets.  Meaning they look at their emails, appointments and phone logs to reconstruct their day as they prepare their timesheets.   Time capture is perfect for this group.  It automates the "hunting and gathering" process and sends the timekeeper a detailed journal report at the end of the day.

What Does Smart Time Capture?

How Does Time Capture Work?

Smart Time’s core platform incorporates a proprietary, on-demand data mining engine that searches through your firm’s systems and returns information about every event the timekeeper completed throughout the day. It finds e-mails, calendared meetings, phone calls, mobile calls, research, documents, dictation and more.

The timekeeper can log in via web browser and query a date range. Smart Time polls the firm’s systems and processes the data through a Relationship Engine that assigns client matter or project codes to the events and adds relevant information to the event description to jog the timekeeper’s memory.   

The diagram below illustrates the Smart Time capture process: