Where the leakage happens
Time is rarely lost on the work that is easy to see. Court appearances, drafting sessions, and scheduled conferences get recorded because they occupy a visible block of the day. The leakage is concentrated in short, unscheduled client contact.
- The quick call taken between two other tasks, where nothing is written down before the next thing starts.
- The call that runs longer than expected, recorded at the length it was supposed to be rather than the length it was.
- End-of-day reconstruction, where a practitioner estimates from memory and consistently rounds down.
- Calls handled outside the office, on a mobile, that never enter the system at all.
- Advice given in a call that is recorded as an administrative attendance because the substance was not captured.
The last one is worth dwelling on. A call where real advice was given, recorded as "attendance on client, 0.2", is both a billing loss and an evidential loss. As covered in what is an attendance note, the same document does two jobs, and a thin note fails at both simultaneously.
The arithmetic
The numbers are worth doing for your own practice rather than accepting a general claim, because the answer varies enormously with charge-out rate and call volume.
The shape of it is straightforward. Take the number of client calls a practitioner handles in a week that do not currently generate a time entry. Multiply by the average length. Multiply by the charge-out rate. Annualise. Then multiply by the number of fee earners.
The result is usually larger than people expect, because the intuition anchors on the individual call being small rather than on the frequency. Our billable time recovered calculator runs this with your own figures.
Why the usual fixes do not hold
| Fix | Why it fades |
|---|---|
| Discipline and reminders | Works for a fortnight after the partners meeting. It asks practitioners to interrupt their own workflow dozens of times a day, which is not sustainable under load. |
| Timers in the practice management system | Requires remembering to start and stop, which is exactly the failure the system is meant to solve. Forgotten timers also produce wildly wrong entries. |
| End-of-day catch-up | Depends on memory, systematically rounds down, and produces vague notes because the detail has already gone. |
| Delegating to a paralegal | Helps with the note but not with the time entry, and adds cost. Covered in automating attendance notes vs a paralegal. |
The common weakness is that all four rely on the practitioner doing an extra thing at the moment they are least able to. The call ends, the next matter is waiting, and the administrative step loses.
Joining the note and the time entry
The more durable approach is to stop treating the attendance note and the time entry as two separate tasks that both depend on the practitioner remembering.
The call already produces a record: your phone system knows the call happened, who it was with, and exactly how long it ran. Where the system also produces a transcript, the substance of the conversation exists too. Everything needed for both the note and the entry is already there, unused.
CallNote works from that transcript, via paste, email forward, or a connector to Aircall or Dialpad, and produces a structured attendance note in about two minutes. The note carries the duration and the substance of what was advised, which is what a defensible time entry needs to sit behind it. It never records the call and never joins it, so no new audio artefact is created.
The practical effect is that the note stops competing with the next matter for attention. It is generated, the solicitor reviews and corrects it, and it is lodged and sealed. The time entry then has a substantive record behind it rather than an estimate from memory.
The write-off question
There is a second-order effect worth noting. Time entries that are vague are the first to be written off in a costs review, either internally or on assessment. An entry reading "attendance on client 0.4" invites reduction. An entry supported by a note recording the advice given is far harder to challenge.
So the value of capturing the substance is not only the time that was never recorded. It is also the recorded time that survives review. Firms that improve their notes usually see both effects, and the second one is easier to overlook.
The for law firms page covers how this works across a practice, and best attendance note software for law firms compares the available approaches.
Common questions
How much billable time do firms typically lose on unrecorded calls?
It varies too much with charge-out rate and call volume for a single figure to be meaningful. The useful exercise is to count the client calls in a week that produced no time entry, multiply by average length and rate, and annualise across fee earners. The number is usually larger than expected because intuition anchors on the size of each call rather than the frequency.
Is a timer in the practice management system enough?
For scheduled work it often is. For short unscheduled client calls it tends not to be, because it depends on remembering to start and stop the timer, which is the same failure it is meant to solve. Forgotten timers also produce entries that are obviously wrong and then get deleted rather than corrected.
Does capturing more detail in a note help with costs assessment?
Yes. Vague entries are the first to be reduced on assessment or in an internal write-off review. An entry supported by a note recording what advice was actually given is substantially harder to challenge, so better notes protect recorded time as well as capturing unrecorded time.
Does CallNote record the call to work out the duration?
No. It never records and never joins the call. It works from the transcript your existing phone or meeting system already produces, which carries the timing information along with the content. No new audio recording is created.
Can this work for calls taken on a mobile?
It depends on whether the mobile call produces a transcript. Where a practitioner uses a business phone system that transcribes calls, those calls flow through the same way. Where they do not, the transcript can be pasted or forwarded in. Calls with no transcript at all remain a manual note.