Michelle Richards

Michelle effortlessly runs the books for law firms which provide services to the commercial, litigation, finance, succession, and energy and resources industries.

Months of tedious previewing and generating bills with a system that relied heavily on manual intervention led Michelle to investigate a better solution. At the time, Michelle was working for six firms when she realised that they were all going through the same time-consuming process to generate their bills.

The challenge for Michelle became more complex as she came to realise that her clients would need to change to a better solution.

Michelle's journey to select technology that would reduce billing time would involve the partners and executives at the firms where she consulted. Michelle concluded that a solution should serve all areas of the practice, in one system that includes:

• Extensive capabilities across all business operations

• The correct structure for bookkeeping and accounting functions

• Technology which created opportunities for saving time

• Time recording tools available easily for fee earners

• End-to-end processes for staff to track every dollar spent and billed

• Easily generated pre-billing reports

• Accurate calculations to ensure error-free invoices

• Full reporting and synchronisation with MYOB or Xero.

Choosing the right system was crucial to not only Michelle, but to the firms that she worked with. She realised that her clients needed a practice management platform which would integrate client data with the accounting side of the business.

Michelle determined that the system would need to:

• Save time in generating pre-billing guides

• Be easy to use and have an intuitive interface

• Be cloud-based and handle documents securely

• Interact with MYOB and have full recording capabilities

• Be accurate

• Have reporting for debtors, pre-bills, WIP and receipts; with the option of scheduling reports

• Enable the firms to work remotely

Michelle researched the options and decided that LEAP was the only practice management platform that would support the accounting needs of her clients.

Transitioning to LEAP increased productivity for both Michelle and the firms she works with

From the moment that LEAP was in use at the law firms, Michelle noticed a dramatic difference in time spent on reviewing billing. She was able to streamline her billing and accounting processes and now works more productively.

"LEAP saves an enormous amount of time and therefore money."

The positive impact of LEAP extends beyond bookkeeping. Michelle was pleased to see increased productivity at the firms using LEAP to record their billable time, and access the latest legal rates and charges.