Join our product team for a deep dive into seamless invoicing. In this masterclass we will discuss:
1. Eliminating extra tabs and apps: Single-platform collaboration with attorneys in LeanLaw
2. Keeping everything in one place: Integrated payments for trust requests, full balance payment links, etc.
3. Accelerating A/R to Paid Cycle: Powerful collections tooling for your firm
4. Understanding to the Penny: Advanced invoice & payment reporting
5. Trusting your Numbers: Intuitive reconciliation and accounting
Below is a Transcript version of this Masterclass:
Gabe Blanchet: Hello to everybody. We’re gonna this is my name’s Gabe Blanchette. I’m the head of product here at lean law, really excited about this webinar. We’re gonna give everyone just a few minutes to
Gabe Blanchet: to join. We’re expecting quite a few more folks. Thank you for those of you who are prompt.
Gabe Blanchet: awesome.
Gabe Blanchet: Oh, yeah, people flooding in fantastic.
Gabe Blanchet: awesome. We’ll get started in the actual contents of this invoice of this. Excuse me of this webinar on invoicing. In just a few minutes we’ll introduce ourselves as well it more formally in a few minutes. But my name is Gabe joined by Melissa. We both work on the product team here at lean loss. So all day we’re thinking about
Gabe Blanchet: how to help attorneys, law firms and specifically operators and law firm administrators enjoy their enjoy their work more, you know, be more effective, be more efficient through often through the use of software but often through better tips and tricks and
Gabe Blanchet: processes. So this is what we’re passionate about here at lean law.
Gabe Blanchet: Yeah, people are just people are coming online by the
Gabe Blanchet: so we’ll we’ll just wait a few minutes before getting started. If I could ask as we as we just sort of wait for a few more folks to join. If if folks could use the chat box here in zoom to mention either
Gabe Blanchet: what they’re interested in? You know. Why did you join this webinar? What is what is what? What is you know? Out of the the 5 components that we listed out, or just in general. What are you most curious or interested in learning about?
Gabe Blanchet: In this webinar that can help, you know, we can address those specifically. or make sure that we do. So. Please just use that chat if you want to share where you’re dialing in from. And
Gabe Blanchet: you know, we we welcome that. We’d love to see that.
Gabe Blanchet: And if you want to share what what type of practice area law firm you’re with, we’d be curious to see that as well.
Gabe Blanchet: Chat is currently disabled. It looks like. let’s see if we can.
Gabe Blanchet: Let’s see if we can turn that on.
Gabe Blanchet: We can use the it looks like if the chat is not enabled yet. Go ahead and use the QA. Welcome you to use that
Gabe Blanchet: and Allison. Maybe we can turn on the Alison is the Zoom overlord here, and maybe can help turn on the Webinar chat
Gabe Blanchet: here.
Gabe Blanchet: All right. We’ll get started in 1 min here. but a few more people join.
Gabe Blanchet: Awesome. Let’s go ahead and get started. I’m not seeing, probably due to
Gabe Blanchet: us, not having chat enabled which, Allison, if we’re able to to turn that on, let’s let’s turn that on as well as the QA. So that folks can interact as Melissa and I give this webinar
Gabe Blanchet: Brad, I do see your test. Thank you. In the QA. Thanks for doing that, mark. I see you’re from Houston, Texas. You’re new to lean law. Welcome to welcome to lean law. Thank you for choosing to use lean lawn. We’re really excited to have you trying to understand lean laws, full capabilities. Awesome. Happy to do that.
Gabe Blanchet: Cynthia. I see your test as well.
Gabe Blanchet: So it looks like we’re using the QA. Maybe the chats not not working, or we don’t have it enabled. So please do ask questions through QA. etc., and let’s go ahead and get started. So first I’ll I’ll introduce myself. Melissa, introduce herself, and then we’ll we’ll kick this off. We’ll talk. We’re gonna talk all about invoicing
Gabe Blanchet: and perfecting your invoicing process for small and medium sized law firms. So my name is Gabe Blanchette. I’m the head of product here at lean law. I’ve created many products in my career to date. Mostly software. Also. Yeah, I did an indoor farming hardware product as right out of right out of school. So I love creating great products and great products, anticipate the needs of their users. And so in this case, you know, our users are.
Gabe Blanchet: small and medium sized law firms. We have attorneys and timekeepers, of course, paralegals everybody who’s actually doing the legal services. Then we have operators and administrators. And then we have, you know, mixed in. We have partners in managing, you know, managing attorneys, responsible attorneys. And so
Gabe Blanchet: aren’t really understanding the needs of all of those types of users and building a great product over time is what gets me up every day. So that’s that’s me. Melissa.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah, I’m Melissa Schaefer’s. I am an associate product manager at lean lot. You might recognize me from chat because I was in the support team before this. Spent about a year there.
Melissa Schaefers: and for the last few months have been on the product team, and I’m super excited to get to use all the contacts that I have to build. What makes you know makes law firms run better. So I’m excited to be here today and talk about seamless invoicing.
Gabe Blanchet: I love working with Melissa on the product team because of her background and support. She’s got such deep empathy for all of our customers, day to day, day to day lives, and specifically what you know, what they’ve needed support within the past. So bringing that into the product team so we could develop proactive sort of features and functionalities. Why, I love working with Melissa.
Gabe Blanchet: Awesome. So let’s let’s go to the next slide here.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah.
Gabe Blanchet: we’ve got 5
Gabe Blanchet: got 5 components of seamless invoicing that we’ve identified. And we’re gonna use this webinar to talk through these looks like our chat is enabled, by the way, so you don’t have to use the QA. To to ask questions or or chat so please feel free to use that
Gabe Blanchet: So we work with hundreds of mid-size law firms. They, you know, who who use lean law day in and day out, month in and month out, to get invoices out.
Gabe Blanchet: We have generated over a billion somewhere between one and 2 billion dollars worth of invoice value, or our customers have using our platform.
Gabe Blanchet: That’s across all different types of practice areas, you know. B, 2 B. You know, firms that are working for intellectual property or litigation with the largest, you know fortune, 500 companies all the way to family law offices, you know, a local family office that’s working with, you know, wills, trust estates, divorce, etc., and everything in between. So we’ve got a wide variety of practice areas.
Gabe Blanchet: and our customers are in the Us. The U.S.A. In Canada, and we do have a few more broadly international in general. Our customers love using lean law. Those are attorneys, and especially operators, really love some of the bulk functionality. And you know we’ve really designed this for you so just sharing that so that, you know, you understand where Melissa and I are and lean law are coming from when we develop opinions about
Gabe Blanchet: what seamless invoicing looks like for mid sized law firms. So we’re gonna talk through 5 5 things, and we’re gonna do it in the form of 2 main examples which we think is gonna be useful. So the first component here eliminating extra tabs and apps
Gabe Blanchet: we are really focused on, you know, quickbooks is an amazing accounting tool, but attorneys are not in quick books. Therefore, if you’ve got elements like sending it an invoice email through quick books. Specifically, your attorneys actually don’t see that. There’s other. There’s other stuff. We’ll go through today like adding expenses, hard costs, soft costs, etc.
Gabe Blanchet: There’s collaboration on actually getting that invoice. Pdf, to reflect with the work that was actually done, you know. Ha! We are obsessed with figuring out, how do we create single platform collaboration, develop efficiencies with the folks who have to get this invoice and the invoice email, everything that this entails together, number 2, keeping everything in one place. So we’re we’re
Gabe Blanchet: we’re really, we’re focused on creating an all in one
Gabe Blanchet: sort of payments. Trust request, full balance payment links solution where you can see and and we’ll so we’ll illustrate that
Gabe Blanchet: number 3 accelerating accounts receivable to paid. So
Gabe Blanchet: you know, some some of our firms are using trust accounts. Retainers in really smart ways. Some ha! You know, send invoices, wait to get paid on them. We we have a flexible way of thinking, you know, accommodating diff. How different firms, Bill. But in general
Gabe Blanchet: you know the better collections, tooling and process you have the shorter your accounts receivable are the shorter your cash cycle is, the more efficient your firm operates, the happier you know, managing partners and and owners and operators are. So we’re we’re really focused on that, especially coming up towards the end of the quarter here. And the end of the the fiscal year for most firms.
Gabe Blanchet: number 4 understanding to the penny so really understanding invoices and payments. Reporting. And so we’ll talk about reconciliation, reporting, and then trust your numbers in line with that intuitive reconciliation and accounting. So making like making our lives easier on the back end. Once payments are are actually received
Gabe Blanchet: awesome. So
Gabe Blanchet: let’s go to, you know
Gabe Blanchet: just a quick why, focus on invoicing, you know whether you use lean law or not. There are better time tracking and billing set softwares.
Gabe Blanchet: you know, being then then there were 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
Gabe Blanchet: actually generating the data, you know, from time entries, fixed fees, expenses. That type of context as well as client matter. Creation, getting those into invoices is generally becoming easier.
Gabe Blanchet: What we’re thinking a lot about Lina is, how do we enable better collaboration between time keepers, operators, things like, how do we surface an audit trail? So that you know exactly, you know when work in progress was submitted to into your time tracking billing program, you know. Who modified it? Where did? Where did different pieces go? So those are things that that we’re focused on.
Gabe Blanchet: But one of the key takeaways that we wanna drive home today. And we’re gonna show a lot of examples of this is
Gabe Blanchet: invoicing is often thought about, as you know, the Pdf. That’s generated, or the the lead, you know, for firms that do leads billing, or their clients take, you know, leads codes.
Gabe Blanchet: you know. It’s off. Invoicing’s often thought about that sort of end product. We think about invoicing more broadly. We think about invoicing as more than the Pdf. so let’s go. Let’s go to the next slide here. That means that great invoicing
Gabe Blanchet: in our way of thinking about this means end to end alignment
Gabe Blanchet: around the client and the firm financial relationship. And so what does that actually mean? That means that from engagement letter all the way through the end of a relationship
Gabe Blanchet: align driving alignment through. That is, the is the undertone, or
Gabe Blanchet: or is the key component of grade invoices.
Gabe Blanchet: That means that expectations are clear. Communication is crisp, and you, as an operator or an administrator, get a lot less pushback or questions from your timekeepers, your attorneys, your responsible, responsible, and managing partners, and from end clients, whether it’s that large, you know Fortune 500 company department, or whether it’s that you know the father who’s getting divorced, which is one of the examples we’ll give here. And so next slide here.
Gabe Blanchet: What we’ve seen is that
Gabe Blanchet: let’s go back one slide. Sorry. What we’ve seen is that alignment and communication ultimately build trust, and when we talk to the the thousands of attorneys who are on lean law.
Gabe Blanchet: They say. Ultimately, I’m trying to create a trusted relationship with my clients. That’s true, no matter what practice area, no matter what size, law firm, no matter what size client they want to create trusted relationships with their end client. So our question as a product team is, how can we facilitate
Gabe Blanchet: trust. How can we better facilitate trusted relationships when you’ve got attorneys, when you’ve got operators and you’ve got clients
Gabe Blanchet: next slide.
Gabe Blanchet: So here here you’ve got the partner, the attorney of the timekeeper.
Gabe Blanchet: They need to. You know, they need to build. They want to build a better business, and they want to spend their hours practicing law instead of chasing payments, trying to update operators or clients on a certain matter in the middle. You’ve got operators who.
Gabe Blanchet: as we all know, have a crazy cycle towards at the beginning of every month, typically for those of us on month the monthly billing cycle who gotta get dozens 100 or thousands of invoices out on behalf of all of the activity in their law firm, and they want better tools to make billing, to, to drive alignment. Right? Is the work in progress actually reflective of what happened? Are there any write downs? Is everything captured correctly? How are we expressing this to the client?
Gabe Blanchet: Is a client expecting what we’re about to send them. Operators need great tools to make that efficient at scale. And clients. They want transparency. They want great communication from from their law firm.
Gabe Blanchet: So that’s what we’re here to talk about today. Now, it doesn’t matter what what software you’re using to adopt the concepts we’re going to talk about. But because we’re on the product team at lean law. We’re gonna frame this in. How lean law does this and how lean lies is increasingly, you know, developing functionality to facilitate this this alignment. So what we’re calling this at lean law is lean, align.
Gabe Blanchet: lean, align is everything related to driving alignment between partners, time between partners or attorneys rather than
Gabe Blanchet: operators and and clients.
Gabe Blanchet: That’s lean, align, and it’s the it’s it is the core element of a great invoicing process and workflow
Gabe Blanchet: awesome. So the way the way we’re gonna talk about driving alignment and therefore great invoicing is through 2 main examples. So first, we’ve got A, B 2 B situation, an intellectual property firm that’s working on behalf of quantum synergetics. Quantum synergetics. Let’s say that they’re a. The details don’t matter that much. But let’s say that they’re, you know, developing some some new innovation in biotechnology. They’re based in Boise, Idaho.
Gabe Blanchet: and our firm is working on a fixed fee and hourly basis to help them develop their IP, so file file a new patent. Melissa, do you want to talk to the next? The next example.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. Yeah. Our next client we’re gonna be working with is John Smith. He is getting divorced. He has a couple of daughters. And he’s just having a rough go of it right now. Definitely not as excited as the biotech firm.
Melissa Schaefers: So to get started.
Melissa Schaefers: You know, for the like client onboarding for you know, for working with a tech firm as an as an IP firm. There’s it’s a little more complicated than just as a family lawyer. There are client billing guidelines to review and make sure that you’re in line. A lot of big companies like this will have a like vendor portal where you submit your invoices. That might be leads format
Melissa Schaefers: or other guidelines that you have to follow to make sure that you get paid on time. And you’ll usually want an engagement letter where you sort of agree that you’ve like understood all of their guidelines, and they’re ready to work with you and get that signed.
Gabe Blanchet: But and so that so this is where this is where we define great invoicing to start is we’re really with that engagement letter and the intake of the client billing guidelines, and there’s a few ways of
Gabe Blanchet: a few acronyms related to client billing guidelines. This, and we’ll so we’ll we’ll talk a little bit about that. Go ahead.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. And then for John Smith, with like a divorce, a divorce case it’s just depending on your familiarity with your client. You might have an actual engagement letter, or you might just be working on a word basis but lots of law firms will send their engagement letter over email, and they might then collect you know, the trust to get started. If you work with trust accounting
Melissa Schaefers: in lean law. We make it super easy to send that initial trust request and get it paid.
Melissa Schaefers: So for John Smith I could send him.
Melissa Schaefers: Maybe it’s I think $5,000. We said
Melissa Schaefers: and you know. So the deposit memo his email, if I need to. CC, anyone else, and if I need to, you know, change the the language of the email that he’ll get. I could, you know, say first.
Melissa Schaefers: trust your closet
Melissa Schaefers: and request those funds.
Melissa Schaefers: He’ll pretty quickly get an email with a a link to pay that initial trust deposit. The really exciting thing about our the way that we do trust requests is we make sure that money never hits your operating account. So you might be, you know. You might have tried to use other like payments, providers to collect things like that. But struggled with only having one bank account that you could use. But we’ll make sure that
Melissa Schaefers: you have. You can have your operating account and your trust account, and we take care of the accounting. So you don’t have to worry about running into compliance issues
Gabe Blanchet: awesome. Great, great demo of of trust, you know, accepting trust right upfront next slide here. So we’ll as part of lean aligned. We will be working a lot next year on
Gabe Blanchet: helping you onboard clients and specifically around the getting those engagement letters to really spell out the the terms of the financial relationship in addition to the the scope of work or the the services being performed. And when you do that effectively, you really set expectations whether you’re working with John Smith and a divorce case, or you’re working with quantum synergics for a big IP, you know, a a large la ongoing IP relationship
Gabe Blanchet: setting those firms getting that alignment upfront is going to be a key area of focus for lean law. So we don’t have that much to show here on best practices with engagement letters. It’s it. That is what we are studying right now. Any of you who think you do this well or want to talk about this, our product team. So myself, Melissa and others want to speak with you want to interview you so that we build the best engagement letter sort of work flow that maybe integrates with your existing tools.
Gabe Blanchet: Your existing document management, etc., or or replaces it and say, you know, in a, in a, in that most collaborative way, we will be focused on this quite a bit next year. So just wanna
Gabe Blanchet: just want to put that out there, that that that onboarding and engagement letters are gonna be a key area of focus for us. So now let’s let’s move forward. Assuming that we’ve reviewed client billing guidelines. We’ve gotten the engagement letter drafted and signed. So expectations are very clear between client and firm. Now let’s move to just doing the work. The services are performed.
Gabe Blanchet: We’re not going to talk much about this, but one of the reasons that many people are adopting lean law and softwares like it is because tracking time expenses, fixed fees.
Gabe Blanchet: whether it’s on a mobile app so Ios android web app a desktop tracker. We’ve got great tools to help attorneys actually capture and paralegals and time time trackers actually capture the work being performed.
Gabe Blanchet: So for the purposes of this webinar. Let’s assume that we’ve
Gabe Blanchet: we’ve done discovery interviews and drafted the patent application for quantum synergitics, and for John Smith. We’ve drafted drafted perhaps an asset plan or the separate separation agreement from their partner. So the the work has been performed.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah, and once you’re, you know, once all of that is ready to go all of your work in progress. It’ll be available in if you’re familiar with Lean while you’re familiar with this. But it’ll be available, and you’re ready to build tab. And with the click of a button you can draft your invoice.
Melissa Schaefers: Once we actually have the the invoices drafted. You can start doing the like like any collaborative work that your firm might have. For things like, Oh, oops! I meant to, you know. Write that time, entry down, or can you give them a credit? Because you know, Xyz, deliverable might have been late?
Melissa Schaefers: We have, you know, steps or folders in here for what you have drafted? And you know, once it’s ready to review
Melissa Schaefers: your like, your responsible timekeeper, your partner, whoever you know, takes on that role of like final edits to the invoice, can can do that here before approving it and sending it to quickbooks or sending it to the client.
Melissa Schaefers: for for the actual like sending of the invoice. I know. One of the things that I was surprised with when I like first started at lean law. Was, how many emails like this operators have to field on a regular basis? Oh, yeah, sure.
Melissa Schaefers: So like, for instance, for quantum synergetics. If they’re billing with leads they are, gonna you know.
Melissa Schaefers: our operator will need to upload the leads, file to a like a leads portal of vendor portal. And the business will quantum synergyx will then review it.
Melissa Schaefers: frequently. Most of these businesses are also looking for expense attachments which can be really difficult to wrangle. I’ve seen some complicated processes that people have to keep these straight like with shared drives and things like that. But one of the things we’re hoping to help with
Melissa Schaefers: is creating the ability to actually
Melissa Schaefers: to actually
Melissa Schaefers: att like. Attach these. Attach these attachments when you record the hard cost, when you record the expense, so that when it’s when you’re in ready to build. When you’re in draft. It’s right there and ready to go, so that when you’re sending your leads file uploading your leads file, it’s available in a in a zip file at the same time. So
Melissa Schaefers: I’d like to show that
Gabe Blanchet: So this is so, mo Mel Melissa, before you show the the details here. This is all about single platform collaboration, you know, right now, previously in lean lawn and many programs you had, you know, maybe a way for attorneys or timekeepers to record an expense.
Gabe Blanchet: But then, if there’s actually an attachment, you know a receipt for that, whether it’s Pdf. Or Jpeg, or what a Jpeg image they often had to go, you know. Submit it to the operator or put it in some sort of onedrive or document management system in a way that it was disconnected. Maybe use file names or something like that, to try to stay organized. But it might have been disconnected from the actual expense.
Gabe Blanchet: And you know many of our firm operators then had to upload that upload that
Gabe Blanchet: attachment or that receipt to quickbooks, and maybe attach it to the expense there. So what Melissa’s showing here is where we’re what we’re currently working on will be released in the coming weeks or or month or so to to make this a much more single platform experience.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah, so this is, you know, the draft view that you’re familiar with and your timekeepers will have already uploaded the receipts for the like filing fees. You know any like binding fees. Anything like that? And you can review it right here. Make sure. Yep, that’s the right file.
Melissa Schaefers: and it’ll be ready to go whether you send it with a email
Melissa Schaefers: or upload a lead file to a portal. That information will be here for you to review or exclude as needed.
Melissa Schaefers: Does anyone have any questions? I think I don’t know if we’ve looked at the QA. For a.
Gabe Blanchet: Yeah. I’ve got the QA. Right here. Alicia is asking about notes. I assume you’re talking Alicia, about internal notes, and how that works through the billing steps. Where do they go after billing? Can you confirm whether you’re talking about internal notes, which is something we’ve introduced to time entries
Gabe Blanchet: and have big, much broader plans for.
Gabe Blanchet: Can you just? And I’ll get back to this question. Ii wanna point out what Melissa has on screen right here. So
Gabe Blanchet: all everybody who uses lean laws used to, or all operators, I should say.
Gabe Blanchet: should be familiar with what a draft invoice looks like, you know, before you submit it to quick books. You’re in this view. That that Melissa was just showing
Gabe Blanchet: where you can see the services, provide the expenses, etc. And you’ve got. This is a draft invoice when we think about helping operators and firms in general
Gabe Blanchet: a line with their clients.
Gabe Blanchet: It’s really important that that we think about, not just the invoice Pdf, but also how that’s being delivered to clients.
Gabe Blanchet: And so that means there’s frequently in today’s world, unless you’re printing these and mailing them in, in which which a few of few out of our a few firms do. But the vast majority email these Pdfs Eve out of out of. I don’t have the breakdown of how many upload leads files versus print literally print these out and send them. But the vast majority email these.
Gabe Blanchet: that’s why we’re really excited to introduce emailing through lean law. And what this enables, you know whether you currently use outlook or Gmail to sort of download the Pdf, and then send that way. Or you use quickbooks email delivery service. The reason why we believe that this is
Gabe Blanchet: is a better experience for your firm is that it? It all goes back to single platform collaboration when when the responsible attorney for a given matter is able to not just review the draft invoice.
Gabe Blanchet: but also the email. And we’re about to show you some awesome functionality there. They’re they’re able to think about in totality the message that we’re sending to the client whether it’s on a monthly billing cadence or a different billing cadence. The message, again, is not just the invoice Pdf. That has to be reflective of the work, the services provided, and the way that your firm and that responsible attorney wants to send those.
Gabe Blanchet: But it’s also the email. And that’s where we think there’s a lot. There’s a lot of, you know, a lot of room for us to really build great tools for you to communicate better over email, not just in the Pdf
Gabe Blanchet: communicate better with clients over email using all of the context that lives inside Lima already.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah.
Melissa Schaefers: yeah. I think that you know, when when we were building this, this.
Melissa Schaefers: this functionality. For like actually
Melissa Schaefers: drafting the email for your client and using like Gabe, is talking about all the context that exists already. In your time entries your expense, descriptions and client info. To avoid situations like this. You send the email or the invoice, either through mail or through email.
Melissa Schaefers: and get a email back right away. What am I paying for? What is this and have to kind of navigate that as the operator, or if you’re a solo, you know, Firmware
Melissa Schaefers: just yourself taking time out of your your taking time away from practicing law to get aligned with your client.
Gabe Blanchet: Not everybody should or wants to read. But this is what you’re saying essentially is you send it an invoice. Pdf, you send an invoice to a client. In this case the divorce, the the divorce client, John Smith, and he or the client responds back with, Hey, I need clarification.
Gabe Blanchet: This is, you know, this is not aligned with my expectation, but either in the total amount or in some you know, I thought there was going to be more time written off or written down. I thought that you know that this service wasn’t part of the package, or being provided so just asking for clarification. That’s what this email is.
Gabe Blanchet: It’s showing.
Melissa Schaefers: yeah, yeah. And you know, we’ve we’ve spoken to a lot of law firms recently who spend a significant amount of time writing personalized emails for every for every client like each billing cycle. And what we’d like to do is help like speed up that process without reducing the quality or leading to. You know
Melissa Schaefers: the impression that you’re not a team with your with your clients, which is ultimately what everyone wants.
Melissa Schaefers: So we’ll have the ability, of course, to just use the template if you’re using Lena line already, you’re familiar with the ability to set a firm template that auto populates things like the clients. First name the balance and the date due.
Gabe Blanchet: And we are adding onto that using. Melissa. Let me just make sure that that’s clear. Cause I we you know we see a bunch of folks in the audience here, some who are probably familiar with lean loss, some who are not so so lean law in the settings tab, there is a way to create a template for these emails. So that so, as Melissa’s referencing, this page gets filled in with that template, so you can.
Gabe Blanchet: you know, move quite quickly if you don’t want to for some reason, personalize a specific email beyond what the template, the the personalization that the template allows.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s super useful, especially when you’re working on a when you’re working with clients who
Melissa Schaefers: know what to expect, and in in situations where there’s a a really specific like generalized cadence like fixed fees for different steps in immigration case, for instance, but in instances like with John Smith, who’s getting divorced and having a really rough go of it.
Melissa Schaefers: It. It makes sense to do a little more hand holding for him and explain. You know what was done, what the value of that work is so like, what those actual outcomes for him are and offer things like payment plans, you know, is getting divorced is very expensive, as we all know.
Melissa Schaefers: And so we’re introducing this ability to auto draft a personalized email for your clients using AI
Melissa Schaefers: so we’re pulling this information from the client notes. The last communication with the client. So the last email I sent in October and the actual data on the time entry. So, for instance, like initial consultation and case preparation that corresponds to a couple of time entries that are on the actual invoice
Melissa Schaefers: and
Melissa Schaefers: the information. You know, we know I’ve I’ve told, like through client notes. I’ve told our software that this this client is cost cost conscious and might want something like a payment plan.
Melissa Schaefers: So this email is a lot more personalized and and personal, really like,
Melissa Schaefers: for
Melissa Schaefers: for this client who’s needing more context and
Melissa Schaefers: a a closer relationship.
Melissa Schaefers: so
Gabe Blanchet: yeah. Fantastic, fantastic. Overview, Melissa. And so here, sort of the how does this work again. This pulls from client notes. So each client in the client tab has a note section big open text field.
Gabe Blanchet: If if you know many firms already. Use that to track things about the client, you know, if it’s a personal relationship with a client, you know, you you track what you know what the partners name is, and there’s they’ve got 2 dogs, and they live in this town. And but there, you know, especially in a B, twob, case, there may be reporting structures. There may be context on that on that
Gabe Blanchet: department within a larger firm. There may be, you know who who’s actually gonna receive this bill. What do they care about and then soon we’ll actually introduce the ability to have this will happen next year. But client billing guidelines, you know. Influence.
Gabe Blanchet: How these are drafted. So so we’re essentially, you know, using a lot of the contacts that that you already have in lean law to ha! Just just accelerate how quickly you can. You can build personalized communication.
Gabe Blanchet: That’s all part again, of great invoicing end to end financial alignment around the financial relationship.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. And this is how that email is actually gonna look from John Smith’s perspective. Some of the information that we included. That’s super helpful and works to drive not just for your firm, but for your client. Like knowing where you stand financially to the penny. We include this balance forward. I had a fixed fee last month for this client.
Melissa Schaefers: The new charges, and I can pay either my invoice amount, which is just, you know, 2,300 or my full balance. The other information that we include automatically
Melissa Schaefers: is the trust activity. So remember, we sent that trust request earlier. For $5,000, and the client paid it so in some, in some States for some people. If you have a trust balance like this, you can apply it to your invoice right after you generate it. And.
Melissa Schaefers: the email would reflect that. And in other places you need to send the invoice first and have some lead time for your client to object to anything before you can pay it from trust. So the emailing process is really smart and accounts for both of those situations to update this data as needed.
Melissa Schaefers: For instance, if I were to pay this from trust? The like actual payment link that I generate would would account for that information. So you’re not gonna have a situation where John Smith is accidentally paying twice for the same invoice, once from trust and a second time himself with his card.
Melissa Schaefers: So we make it possible to, you know, pay with debit, credit, or a bank transfer, and this is totally configurable for your firm. So if you’re only interested in accepting money through ech. For example, we can help you get that set up.
Melissa Schaefers: the, I think what we wanna talk. Oh, yeah, go ahead.
Gabe Blanchet: It’d be a great opportunity to talk about. So yeah, on this page, you’ve got the firm logo right up top. That’s configurable. You can change whether you know Ach versus debit credit and then can you talk a little bit about the possibility that we offer on surcharging?
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah, of course. So for for firms that
Melissa Schaefers: want it, we make it possible to surcharge on your credit card transactions. So instead of eating the that cost yourself as a firm you can
Melissa Schaefers: ask your clients to pay it. So if they’re paying with their credit card instead of Ach, they handle the 3% fee, and your Cl, your firm isn’t responsible for it.
Melissa Schaefers: And we also help with that
Melissa Schaefers: accounting. So that will be we can talk a little bit more about that later. But
Melissa Schaefers: this is yeah. This is the payment format, and the the trust request looks very similar to this. So I think what we want to talk about now is the tracking. Right?
Gabe Blanchet: Yeah, absolutely. But let’s yeah.
Melissa Schaefers: yeah.
Melissa Schaefers: so when you send invoice emails through lean law, we make it possible to track what’s been sent. So we have this.
Melissa Schaefers: This invoice that we just sent for John Smith. And I can see.
Melissa Schaefers: You can see. I sent this a couple of times while I was given this setup today, but I sent it to John. He’s clicked on it. He hasn’t paid it yet. If we record a payment in here.
Melissa Schaefers: Then this will show is paid, I think, like I may not have any sample here.
Gabe Blanchet: Melissa, you said, record a payment. So
Gabe Blanchet: yeah, just to just to make it clear. If if John Smith receives this and pays via credit card that’s automatically reflected here. Right? The payment is applied both here and in quickbooks.
Gabe Blanchet: If if John just gets that email and decides to pay via, you know, if if he or he, you know quantum synergistics pays via bill.com, or their own payment rails. What would that look like. And then, if John Smith writes a check and mails it to your law firm, what would that look like?
Melissa Schaefers: Oh, totally so. Yeah. If the client pays through
Melissa Schaefers: through that payment screen that we just showed. That payment is recorded in quick books and associated with the right invoice automatically. So the invoice balance updates, and it’ll show as paid here like you’re used to for
Melissa Schaefers: for you know, lean law invoices. If, for instance, which you would in this case pay this from trust.
Melissa Schaefers: You would record that payment for that invoice
Melissa Schaefers: it will show up as paid here, and that will sync to the track sent invoices page as well. So
Melissa Schaefers: now, if we
Melissa Schaefers: if John Smith opens that link again. it will show a $0 balance, owing because we paid that invoice
Melissa Schaefers: from trust
Melissa Schaefers: and all of those. If if instead
Melissa Schaefers: he sent you, he calls you up, and he’s like I’m gonna walk into your office and give you cash you would just open the the manage Invoices page here and record a payment for
Melissa Schaefers: for that invoice, and that will sync to quick books as well. So
Melissa Schaefers: and Melissa, what what if?
Gabe Blanchet: What if John Smith wants to, you know, calls the firm and says, I want to pay with a credit card or debit card.
Melissa Schaefers: Oh, sure, yeah. So if he calls you up
Melissa Schaefers: and has his debit card out you can copy the payment link
Melissa Schaefers: and
Melissa Schaefers: paste it into your browser yourself and just enter his card number over the phone and, you know, put in his email address. So he gets a receipt
Gabe Blanchet: awesome.
Gabe Blanchet: So a lot a lot of flexibility there. Going back to the track sent emails. Page. Now, we’re we’re moving to in the 5 components that we laid out for this. We’re moving to accelerating the accounts receivable to paid cycle.
Gabe Blanchet: And what’s it? What’s important here to note is that we’ve we’ve had all several mid-size firms tell us about the
Gabe Blanchet: well, the back and forth required. When there’s accounts, there’s an account receivable, or there’s an outstanding invoice
Gabe Blanchet: from a client. Now, if if the responsible attorney doesn’t have access to to quick books or to out. You know the outlook
Gabe Blanchet: account of, or or gmail account, but often outlook account of the operator. Then the responsible attorney has no way of understanding, you know. Has the email? Has the invoice even been sent? They may have to ask the operator that question. Has it been had? Do we know if the client, John Smith, has looked at that email, you know, did that email, Bounce? Have they not received it often an attorney would just call John Smith say, Hey, you know
Gabe Blanchet: well, they’d probably say in a very, you know, thoughtful way, but essentially checking in, you know. Have you received that invoice? Are you pleased with the services provided the track sent emails page is, is a good example of keeping everything in one place where it is accessible to those who should be able to see it. And so, for a responsible attorney or managing partner, they should be able to to see at a glance. You know where that invoice Pdf, or where that invoice email is?
Gabe Blanchet: Has it been opened? Has it been clicked on? Has it been partially paid? Has it been paid this gives them the access to be able to see that, and it also gives operators and administrators an easy way. You know it’s some attorneys aren’t going to come. Come, look in here, they will. Still, you know, just through habit still, ask you as an operator. Well, this gives you an easy way to you’ve you’ve got filters up there to really quickly understand? You know, what is this current status of this invoice or this invoice email.
Gabe Blanchet: So we’ll be continually, you know. W. It is. It is aligned with our mission to make Co. For collections, whether you use trust accounting whether you use payment plans, whether you search charging or not. You know we want to give you the flexibility to do all of that.
Gabe Blanchet: And and ultimately your end clients flexibility to pay sort of how how they want, but ultimately make the information you know, easy to reconcile, easy to understand and accessible all in one place.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah, I think the one thing I didn’t cover is, if you’ve gotten to, you know the end of whatever your billing cycle is, and John Smith still hasn’t paid. You can just send them our reminder using using this page as well, so you could. You know. I think we have a firm now who is just like sorting for unpaid at the end of the month, and sending a reminder on anything that’s outstanding. And you get the same tracking there, and they get the same payment link so they can. They have the same options to pay.
Melissa Schaefers: We see?
Gabe Blanchet: Yeah, let’s go all the way to Alicia’s quote. I know Alicia. I actually see Alicia here as an attendee this is Alicia. Would one of our one of our one of our customers, an operator at a mid size firm?
Gabe Blanchet: Who we really love working with Alicia. Thank you so much for not just being a great, a great user and customer of lean law, but really being a collaborator and helping us as a product team. Think about how to make this better for you, and therefore by extension for hundreds of other
Gabe Blanchet: 100 of other operators, thousands of other attorneys. And ultimately for end clients. You know, who receive invoices, emails and communication from the law firms that that choose to use Lane lost. So thank you, Alicia, for everything you do for us. Sincerely. And with us Alicia, just highlighting this, she started using the reminders. Feature. A few, you know, when we released it a few weeks ago and that morning emailed us back and said, about $15,000 of accounts receivable.
Gabe Blanchet: you know, was was received was collected within moments of sending those emails. So just you know, we we’re really thrilled when we launch functionality. And it immediately impacts our customers. And here’s here’s a pretty good example.
Gabe Blanchet: Awesome. I wanna leave some time for QA. Here at the end. We wanna leave some time. So so let’s go next slide, just to wrap up and saying, You know, we have talked about. We’ve we’ve shown, and we’ve talked about a fair amount of things on a high level. We’ve talked about how invoices aren’t just Pdfs
Gabe Blanchet: successful invoicing requires sort of end to end. Let’s go back to those 5 successful in invoicing requires thinking about the financial relationship and driving alignment
Gabe Blanchet: end to end. That starts with the engagement letter, and it ends at the end of the, you know, with a satisfied customer, whether it’s a John Smith or quantum synergistics. It ends at the you know, at the end of that relationship when they’re willing to refer you to other clients when they’re just thrilled with the relationship
Gabe Blanchet: that that means building trust and alignment throughout. That is what creates successful invoicing. It’s not just about the Pdf.
Gabe Blanchet: How do you do that? Well, you eliminate extra tabs and apps. You know we showed a lot of functionality in lean law today. And and more important than the functionality in lean law. The concepts
Gabe Blanchet: that you want attorneys and operators. You know what you want your timekeepers, operators, to be able to access the the right information at the right time. You don’t want things siloed, and you know expense attachments are only in quickbooks, so attorneys can’t see them or tracks, you know, tracking sent emails is only an outlook or was sent through quick book. So people can’t access that information. We’re really focused on trying to bring, eliminate that ex those extra tabs and apps
Gabe Blanchet: and keep everything in one place for better collaboration.
Gabe Blanchet: We showed powerful collections, tools for the firm. So most of did a great job showing that the the tracks and emails we’ve just released a reminder emails, and we’re not going to go into it today. But we’ve been doing a lot of work recently on
Gabe Blanchet: on reporting both in the billing workflow itself, and in the reports section of lean law to help you understand what is outstanding. You know. How long has it been aging which clients owe you, which amount of money, and be able to do that, not just in table form, but in ways that are easier for you and your attorneys and timekeepers to digest and understand. Very quickly.
Gabe Blanchet: We talked about we talked about. Yeah, II just talked about the reporting section number 4, and then number 5, trusting your numbers so intuitive reconciliation and accounting. You know we didn’t go into and Melissa feel free to expand on any details that operators and and attorneys would would want to know here, around
Gabe Blanchet: you know, around payments and then reconciliation. But the core of it is that we’re trying to build. You know, through our tight integration between lean law and quick books online and and our payments provider Confido, legal. We’re trying to build a lot of automation in place
Gabe Blanchet: but it’s important, as we do a lot of this automation to have auditability. You know, the ability for you to really understand and see it, you know. Hear all the payments that have been made this month here the deposits to our bank account, you know. Trust account and operating account and and really have the ability to understand payments, deposits,
Melissa Schaefers: invoices, trust accounts, you know, in in very intuitive ways. Melissa, is there anything you want to add to that? Yeah. Since lean like uses quick books as our source of truth when we have, when we, you know, send a payment link
Melissa Schaefers: or send an invoice the expectation. Is that
Melissa Schaefers: anything, any payments that are made from trust from the client, or you know, via cash are going to be recorded in Lima, and then sync to quick book. So the data that you’re seeing in lean law is really from quick book. So you’re you can handle the kind of back office. But interacting with your clients.
Melissa Schaefers: you know, component the communication component and have everything available right away in quick books for your account. Or maybe that’s also you wearing multiple hats. To see like you know what what is available, and trust. What deposits can we expect to come through the bank, feed and match up with the payments that we’ve made
Melissa Schaefers: in in a really easy way. That’s one of the most important parts of this is making this making this. Yeah, like it, said Audi, auditable and intuitive for firms to use
Gabe Blanchet: awesome.
Gabe Blanchet: So we’ve talked about these 5 elements to use lean align. The only thing that’s that’s required to use a lot of the functionality. Here is a Confido legal payments account.
Gabe Blanchet: and so on. The next slide here, you know how to get started. It’s all about learning about the functionality which, hopefully, you’ve you’ve learned quite a bit here on this webinar. We’re happy to do more personalized sort of content. We’re producing more support articles and our support team that obviously through chat is a fantastic
Gabe Blanchet: resource for all of our customers to learn about this functionality, ask questions, etc.,
Gabe Blanchet: to start you. You know many, many of our customers are already sending. You know this is very much live. You know, there’s hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through here to clients from end clients.
Gabe Blanchet: but if you’re not yet using lean align and the functionality here you go to the settings, Tab. Go to the Confido legal settings and start your application. There. You’ll create a Confido legal account, you’ll see a a simple application that takes 3 to 4 days. Once you’ve submitted that application to get approved.
Gabe Blanchet: And then then you set up your emails so that invoice email, that sort of default template as well as that reminder email. Those are right in your settings, Tab. And then you’re ready to start using the functionality that we showed today. I will note, we showed a few things that we are in development and will be released over the coming weeks
Gabe Blanchet: we didn’t show anything that that should be released next year or further, we’ve got some exciting stuff coming out. That’s that’s, you know, earlier on in our development process around engagement letters. Around. Better, you know, reporting right in the product around reconciliation. And even more intuitive and auditable ways
Gabe Blanchet: to do that. So around showing the history of an invoice as it moves through those steps. So a lot of exciting stuff planned for next year for Lena line but everything we show today should be, you know, should be coming in over the course of of here. Or is already in the product. Much of it is is, of course, available to customers right now. So please ask any questions of us. For getting started to use Lena line. This is Lena line is is free. It’s included in your subscriptions
Gabe Blanchet: the the payments through lean align have very standard, you know, 2.9 5 on credit cards and debit cards, and one on Ach, transfers with a cap at. So if you have a you know a large Ach! There is a cap on that.
Gabe Blanchet: So those are the, you know, we we built this to be very cost competitive with other payments, providers, and and yeah, the lean aligns other than that is included in your in your subscription. So we do have 7 min here. Let’s go to the next slide here.
Gabe Blanchet: for just sort of end takeaways here which are
Melissa Schaefers: not seeing this slide advance. Oh, but essentially.
Gabe Blanchet: yeah, yeah, there we go. Yeah. Great invoicing isn’t just a Pdf, it’s about financial alignment and building trust. Lena line is included free in your subscription. And then we’re going to email you a form, Melissa, could you? Could you mention a bit about the form with the recording which we’d love for you to fill out?
Yeah. So we’ll just have a
Melissa Schaefers: we’ll send a form out and you can put in your email. What? Your current like frustrations or pain points are with your invoicing billing collections process and what you’d like, like what you’re either
Melissa Schaefers: what you saw here that was most exciting that you’d like to implement, or if there’s something that we didn’t cover like if you could, you know. Snap your fingers and have something we will look into making it happen, and if we can’t. We still want to hear about it? Because it’s, you know, obviously invaluable to us to know
Melissa Schaefers: what
Melissa Schaefers: is happening and what like, what’s happening with individual law firms. And what you need to make like a invoicing process, really.
Melissa Schaefers: blissful and joyful. That’s that’s our end goal. Eventually, that’s where we’re. That’s where we’re
Melissa Schaefers: I don’t know. Striving towards.
Melissa Schaefers: I think we absolutely. Yeah. We have a few questions.
Gabe Blanchet: So we’ve got 6 min left. We’re we’re turning to Q&A.
Gabe Blanchet: And so so please submit your questions here. Looks like we do have.
Gabe Blanchet: Oh, we actually have a lot more than I thought, hold on here.
Gabe Blanchet: My view here was not great. Okay, internal. So let’s start with this one, which I sort of saw and delayed earlier around internal notes Melissa. Would you mind just pulling up a time entry that
Gabe Blanchet: hopefully, this is enabled in your demo firm here. But we’ll show what an internal note is on a time entry.
Gabe Blanchet: So, Alicia, Alicia, thank you for asking. Can we see the notes and how that works through the billing steps. Where do they go after billing? So what Melissa has on screen right now is a you know. It’s the time, entries page, and when you create, when and a timekeeper creates a time entry. They have this section here called internal notes.
Gabe Blanchet: So internal notes are notes like our our notes, that an a timekeeper wants to express internally to an operator, or to another timekeeper, and maybe a paralegal is writing an internal note about potential. Write down or inefficiencies. You know, they’re gonna track a full hour, but they they wanna make a note on this one that you know it. Really, there was some inefficiencies in my hour, so it should be written down to maybe half an hour. Whatever that internal communication is.
Gabe Blanchet: We are at a point now where we are. We are allowing. You know, we’ve built the functionality for timekeepers to be able to input that note. Alicia’s question is, you know, where do these internal notes go?
Gabe Blanchet: There. We have. You know, our product team has a plan.
Gabe Blanchet: The prop, the the plan is to to start with the actual capture of these internal notes when you see work and when you’re an operator or administrator in the billing tab, and you see a time entry, you can go in and view that internal note.
Gabe Blanchet: That is what’s available right now.
Gabe Blanchet: That is not the full vision of this this functionality. The full vision is that that those internal notes are expressed in ways in the billing workflow that are that are visible, more visible than they are now and more collaborative. So you can actually start. So next year we have plans, and I. We don’t know the date on this yet, so it won’t be won’t be early next year, but we have mockups, plans, etc., to start
Gabe Blanchet: start allowing intern better internal collaboration, so that it’s not just one internal note on a time entry, but rather on a draft invoice. You’re able to see any internal notes from all the time, entries, expenses, and fixed fees in one place, and you’re able to actually start a comment thread on any of those or on the entire draft invoice itself. So that means that we’re what we’re division we’re we’re pushing towards is that there’s more single app
Gabe Blanchet: collaboration between timekeepers and operators. And in many of our firms there’s not just one administrator or operator, there’s several. And so, being able to document. You know, the the sort of notes on a draft invoice, or on any of the individual elements that make up a draft invoice is gonna enable much more auditable and trackable communication about. You know what needs to happen, whether it’s
Gabe Blanchet: write downs, better communication. This attorney hasn’t input their time yet. Those are the types of things that will eventually turn into sort of a comment
Gabe Blanchet: comment stream on draft invoices so hopefully. That answers your question, Alisha, candidly. You know we have firms that are already using this to great effect, but our vision for this far exceed sort of what’s in there now or our plan for this, I should say, far exceeds what’s in there now, in that we want to make this a lot more visible in the billing workflow.
Gabe Blanchet: So, Alicia, hopefully. That answers your question, Diane. If the expense receipt Diane asks, and this is for you, Melissa, if the expense receipt is already attached to the expense in quickbooks? Will it automatically flow to lean law, or does it have to be attached again in lean law?
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. So that’s where we’re going? That’s a great question where we’re going with this is that if I enter something in quick books, and attach the receipt there, the receipt and the expense will flow into lean law. Or you know, if you use something like dex
Melissa Schaefers: to create the expense. Take a picture of the receipt, and that ends up in quick books that will sync over as expected to lean lot.
Melissa Schaefers: And then I think we have another question from Tod.
Melissa Schaefers: Are the pending attached expense, receipt features only for lead spelling, or any and all clients billing. So yeah, this is a this is going to be available for folks who are using lean law’s email service. Which is, just requires a Confido legal integration Lena line. So it’ll if you’re using leads, it’ll work. And if you’re sending your invoices with the payment links like we showed the expense attachments will be available as well.
Gabe Blanchet: Awesome. Shanley, ask this process requires Confido. Legal, correct. Shanley. The answer to that is is, yes.
Gabe Blanchet: for to use, to use the full extent of lean align here.
Gabe Blanchet: We’d love. If you have any questions about Confido legal, just be in touch with us at [email protected] or [email protected], or
Gabe Blanchet: just chat at that interco that bubble on the bottom of your of your web. App
Gabe Blanchet: the lean logo web app, Brad Brad asks,
Gabe Blanchet: on the tracking sent invoices, can I set up a rule to auto? Remind about the invoice every 20 days?
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. So that’s yeah. This is a for our first iteration of reminders. We didn’t include automation, like every you know, every 20 days, once a week. You know, at the end of the billing cycle. But that is something we’re looking to implement in. We’re also doing some thinking about
Melissa Schaefers: like bulk reminders for a client. So being able to send you know, maybe a client has 7 outstanding invoices. And you want to send just one reminder email with just one payment link, saying, Hey, this is your full balance. Just at a time. So those things will be
Melissa Schaefers: that’s what we’re doing, some thinking on in tandem. And we want those to be available at the same time.
Gabe Blanchet: Melissa and I will stay on and answer a few answer the remaining questions but I recognize that we are at the top of the hour. So I just wanna thank everybody for coming.
Gabe Blanchet: Thank you for for for those of you who use lean law. Thank you for using lean law for those of you who are considering it.
Gabe Blanchet: If it’s right for you do it. You know, we’ve got a product team in Melissa myself and others who are thinking about. You know. How do we anticipate your needs and make your day to day and month to month, easier and better. And so we want. We want to collaborate with each and every one of you. And, you know, submit. Feature requests through our support team. We look at and process all of those we take those super seriously. We can’t respond to everyone.
Gabe Blanchet: but we but we do take those super seriously, and we’re committed to building a better and better application for you. So thank you again for joining this webinar for those who want to hear the answers to a few more questions. W. Melissa, and I will answer them. But again, thank you, everybody for joining this webinar
Melissa Schaefers: awesome. So let’s let’s keep, I think, yeah, yeah, we have a. So we have. An if you’re sticking around, we have another question from Brad. On track sent invoices. Is there a way to sort by dollar amounts? I don’t see a column for the amount of the invoices there. There isn’t currently.
Melissa Schaefers: that’s definitely an interesting idea. And I’d love to hear more about that.
Melissa Schaefers: Like what? What? Specifically, you would use that for? Cause. Obviously, we’re planning an update to that page. So that would be, you know, if it’s something
Melissa Schaefers: if it’s a if it’s something, certainly that we can’t meet in another way or that a lot of folks are interested in. We’re definitely interested in that for sure.
Melissa Schaefers: Brad, we’d love to hear. We’d love to hear, as Melissa said, more color on that. But I just want to confirm with you that I’m adding that
Gabe Blanchet: as a as a feature request, or sort of an insight for our product team. So
Melissa Schaefers: please do add more contacts if you want. But but we are tracking that great suggestion.
Gabe Blanchet: Rich? Asks. is Lena able to automatically generate an invoice for a past due balance without any work for the current month.
Gabe Blanchet: without having to go through manually sending a reminder for those past due amounts.
Gabe Blanchet: Okay? So, Richie, you’re so yeah, go ahead.
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. So automatically generate an invoice for a pasty balance without any work. So
Melissa Schaefers: not exactly. I think my question would be, is the
Melissa Schaefers: does the past do you balance like? Does that exist in the manage invoices page already, because if it if it does, you could just resend that email
Melissa Schaefers: or resend it. If you didn’t send it with an email previously, you can send it with an email for the first time.
Melissa Schaefers: And it will retain the information that it’s passed you
Melissa Schaefers: and it won’t have any work on the current month.
Melissa Schaefers: so I’d definitely be interested. I’m not sure rich if you’re using Leila
Melissa Schaefers: already or not, but I definitely I don’t know if he’s still on with us, but I’d be interested in wanting a little bit more about that, because I think
Melissa Schaefers: there’s definitely way for us to resolve that
Gabe Blanchet: rich so rich if you’re I do see that you’re still on as an attendee here. So Hi, and if you could email us potentially at
Gabe Blanchet: at product, at my lean Lacom. We’d love to speak with you for 15 min about what you’re looking to do here, and you know what we currently have, we’ll show you. And you know, if we need to build something, we’ll absolutely consider that
Rich Wordes: balance. The prior month. We’re we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re, we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be. We’re gonna be.
Rich Wordes: When I used to use time slips before you came over to lean law time slips would automatically generate a past due balance, invoice that would be sent out for that past due balance, even though I hadn’t built anything for the month. Law does not do that. And I had a talk with
Rich Wordes: Fred, about this. I don’t know 2 years ago, and because there are. I’m sure I’m not the only attorney who has this issue
Rich Wordes: where you’re gonna have balances due. But you’re not gonna have any work for that month, and yet you’d still like an invoice to go out for that balance due without having to go through filtering for your past due stuff and then having to send reminder emails out. So have you guys even considered that kind of functionality?
Melissa Schaefers: Yeah. So I think that that I think if I’m understanding correctly, it sounds like that would almost be resolved by like an automation with reminder emails. So saying, you know, if something’s been outstanding for 30 days or more.
Rich Wordes: Send a follow up email with the subject line outstanding, invoice past you balance, you know, something like that. Automatically. Is that kind of what you’re thinking, or yeah, some some way, so that I, at the end of the month, do not have to look either in in quick books or in lean law to see who hasn’t paid last month, and yet there will automatically be a reminder sent out to them without me having to go through that those machinations.
Melissa Schaefers: Totally. Yeah, that’s I think that’s something that we’re looking that use case. We’re looking to resolve in like at this coming year with automations. And yeah, you know something something in the subject line, or, of course, allowing firms to set their own subject line for what that pass to. Reminder looks like, yeah, thanks for giving me a voice
Melissa Schaefers: awesome
Gabe Blanchet: rich. Thank you for your your long time use of of lean law. We appreciate it. And thanks for this. Thanks for the suggestion. I’m glad we’re gonna
Rich Wordes: we’re gonna sort of meet. Meet your need, I think on this within a com within the coming months. Thanks for your time today.
Melissa Schaefers: Awesome.
Gabe Blanchet: Brad. By the way, Brad, I don’t know if everyone could see the QAI don’t know. But but Brad Brad is saying, Rich, thank you. Love your input here. So we’ve got 1 one attendee thanking you. Thank you. Rich Brad, it’s the same ability. We haven’t managing voices, just adding that over to tracking it. Yup
Melissa Schaefers: for for amounts. Yeah, for amount sorting. Yeah.
Gabe Blanchet: yep. Alicia says. Alicia is responding to that client notes section with, I’d love to see a way to share with other timekeepers for multi-level approval. Okay, so that’s for
Gabe Blanchet: that’s that’s
Gabe Blanchet: getting to the billing, the billing, workflow sort of invoice. Pdf, generation draft invoice developing more collaboration features and approval, maybe more stringent approval. Sort of functionality, and assignment functionality within that. So Alicia.
Gabe Blanchet: so eager to to work with you and our other customers to improve the billing workflow. We’re really. We’re working on leena line now, which includes elements of the billing workflow on the billing page, as we’ve shown today. But really thinking through, you know, what you’re talking about is something that we’re we’re talking about actively as a product team, doing some early user interface. So ux user experience ux designs on so we’ll absolutely come to you for feedback on that.
Gabe Blanchet: With that, you’re welcome, Maria. Thank thank you for for attending. I think we are all set
Gabe Blanchet: I don’t see any outstanding questions. So for those who still remain with us. Thank you so much for sticking on 9 min late. And again, thank you, for you know. Be, be be in touch through the form and through our emails.
Gabe Blanchet: Thanks. Everybody. Have a great Wednesday.
