Thomson Reuters Announces Time and Billing Capabilities for Small Law Firms

UK News

15
Mar
2017

Editor

New Firm Central module eases invoicing, time and matter tracking and management

Thomson Reuters has added Time and Billing capabilities to Firm Central, its cloud-based legal matter management solution for sole practitioners and small law firms. 

Firm Central from Thomson Reuters was launched in the U.K. late last year following its successful introduction in the U.S. four years earlier. It enables law firms to run a more streamlined legal practice by providing a single dashboard encompassing their essential daily working practices, such as document management, matter tracking, events, tasks, client files, collaboration tools and legal research from Thomson Reuters’ legal know-how service, Practical Law.

“We conducted a great deal of research and consultation with small legal practices to ensure the Firm Central offering in the UK meets their needs,” said Roxanne Selby, segment lead for small law firms at Thomson Reuters Legal UK&I business. “Seamless integration with their daily workflow is a key benefit that enables them to operate more efficiently and effectively.”

“When we launched Firm Central in the U.K., it had a strong reception from practitioners and they’ve been eager for us to add Time and Billing so they can have access to a more integrated matter management solution,” said Rob Martin, director of Legal Software Products at Thomson Reuters Legal UK&I business. “With the new module, fee earners can more easily demonstrate their value to clients by automatically tracking time spent against each matter, generating timely invoices and sharing documents through a secure portal.”

Time and Billing provides essential capabilities, including: 

• Billing transparency. Practitioners may log time and expenses against matters, pre-view bills to apply necessary adjustments prior to invoicing and track and apply payments to invoices.
• Time tracking. Practitioners can put their time directly into a time sheet or use the timer to record how long they spend on a phone call, in a meeting or working on a matter.
• Trust Accounts. Practitioners can manage the Trust Accounts efficiently, including application of interest and automatic deductions from the trust.
• A secure client portal provides an efficient way to communicate about matters with clients, share documents and invoices, receive client review and invoice approvals and discuss balances and activities.  

Firm Central is accessible via desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone and fully supports remote working practices, ensuring law firms have instant access to the information they need to make critical decisions wherever they are, and their clients can access documents from any location. It also offers secure document storage backed-up via a Thomson Reuters state-of-the-art UK data centre. Firm Central integrates with Microsoft Windows Explorer and Outlook to support easy capture, indexing and search for all materials essential to effective matter management. 

For more information on Firm Central please visit: www.FirmCentral.co.uk