#346: The Mental Game of Contemporaneous Billing

Read this episode: The Mental Game of Contemporaneous Billing

The Mental Game of Contemporaneous Billing

Contemporaneous billing in the law is a mental game. In this episode of Be a Better Lawyer, you’ll learn how to play this game, so you can stop worrying about billing and enjoy the last week of the month every month.

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Today we’re talking about a topic that so many of my clients come to me with. Whether inside my group program Time Peace for Lawyers™ or they work with me privately, contemporaneous billing is a topic that comes up no matter how long you’ve been practicing the law.

A lot of lawyers think this is an issue with the billable hour. But interestingly enough, there are lawyers out there in the world who don’t think twice about billing. It’s not a problem for them. They just do it and move onto the next task. Did you know that these lawyers exist?

And if you’re one of them, I will offer that what you’ll learn in this episode of Be a Better Lawyer is how to not only think more intentionally around other tasks in your law practice that you find annoying, but you’ll be able to teach the people around you who have trouble with contemporaneous billing. You can also forward this episode to them with so much love for where they’re at right now.

Billing contemporaneously is a learnable skill. I promise you can learn it with attention to the mental game you’ll learn about here today.

If this is a skill you want support learning along with managing your time effectively overall, I highly recommend you join me inside of Time Peace for Lawyers™ — you can learn all about it at dinacataldo.com/timepeace

No matter how long you’ve been a lawyer, you know how to bill contemporaneously, but you don’t do it. That’s how you know it’s not a “how to” problem.

If you’re not billing contemporaneously — or at least pretty darn close to it — then it’s a mindset problem.

Unfortunately, most lawyers don’t realize that contemporaneous billing is a mental game.

What they see is that they either billed same day or they didn’t.

And if they didn’t, here’s what they tend to do:

• they compare themselves to other lawyers who are contemporaneously billing and beat themselves up for not doing it

• They look at their past history of not billing contemporaneously, and they use that information to make the interpretation that they’re bad at billing.

• They put unhelpful thoughts on rerun in their brain. Thoughts like, “Billing is dumb.” “I just want to do the client work and not bill.” “If I didn’t have to bill, my life would be so much better.” “I should look for a job that doesn’t require billing. That will make life easier.” 

• I actually had a client tell herself this last one so much that she almost took a job that required the same amount of hours but would require her to take a huge pay cut because her brain was convinced that the billable hours were the problem. She saw the light.

• They google things like “sample attorney billing statements” and “lawyer billing formats” to try and get examples of what good billing looks like because they think the problem is HOW they’re doing it instead of what’s going on in their mindset when it comes to contemporaneous billing

• They may try different softwares to see if changing the software helps. 

Here’s what they don’t do that you’re going to learn to adopt in this episode:

• Examine what good billers think about differently that make them good billers. In other words, understand the psychology of billing.

• Treat billing as if it’s simply a part of who you are as a lawyer

• Habitually think like a lawyer who contemporaneously bills to become a lawyer who bills contemporaneously much more often than not.

I’m going to get you started focusing on the mental game of billing contemporaneously by helping you create a belief plan — I’ll tell you about what that is in a bit — so you can bill more hours and do it without so much mental drama.

How you think about billing is even more important than “how” you bill. 

In other words, if you’re thinking crappy thoughts about billing, you’re less likely to bill.

When you really understand this, it becomes so much easier not to judge yourself for where you are right now. If you’re not billing, there’s nothing wrong with you. You just haven’t learned the skill of mastering your mindset around billing.

Right now you may be googling things like “sample attorney billing statements” and “lawyer billing formats,” and that may give you information, but the key to implementing what you know how to to is what’s going on between your ears.

Your thoughts.

What is a thought?

I asked this question to a client, and her response was, “it’s something that just pops into your head.”

Sometimes. But ultimately a thought is a few things:

It’s your interpretation of the world. A description of something and an opinion about whether you think something is good or bad or neutral.

It’s a habit, which means you’ve practiced a thought enough times that you now have adopted that as reality.

It’s a choice.

It’s energy.

A thought may pop into your head, but it popped into your head because it’s a habit. 

Let’s look at how you may think about billing. A quick review:

“Billing is dumb.” 

“I just want to do the client work and not bill.” 

“If I didn’t have to bill, my life would be so much better.” 

“I should look for a job that doesn’t require billing. That will make life easier.” 

If you continue to let the habit of thinking these thoughts run your life it will negatively impact you. These thoughts may feel true, but that’s because you’ve practiced them a lot.

It’s a choice to keep thinking them. 

You’ll remember that thoughts are also energy, so that energy can either be depleted or replenished.

When you think, “I just want to do the client work and not bill,” do you feel energized or depleted?

If you feel demoralized, annoyed, irritated, angry — all of those emotions along that spectrum are depleting.

I’m not saying you need to fall in love with contemporaneous billing, but if you can simply move into a more neutral state by practicing new thoughts and creating new habitual ways of thinking, you will drastically cut the mental energy drain and be able to bill more automatically.

I’m going to walk you through an exercise I did with my client to help you do this.

My client had a really great contemporaneous billing habit, but she noticed that she’d stopped for a while, then she had a really good week billing contemporaneously. I knew that she had just stopped thinking intentionally about her billing on the weeks she stopped, so I walked her through an exercise to help her reconnect with the thoughts that were helpful for her.

Her habitual thought about billing that was unhelpful was:

“I’m super annoyed with billing because I’m busy.”

Our first step is getting really clear about how she knows she’s thinking this thought.

Because when you notice the signs, you can catch your brain in the act, and you can refocus the brain on a new belief and practice it. You’re re-wiring the brain to do what you want the more that you do this.

So I asked her what she noticed when she skipped the billing and just went on to the next task.

She would notice that she’d be in the middle of typing a narrative then jump to her email or do just about anything else rather than complete her task. Looking back she also noticed that she’d feel tight in her shoulders and that her breathing would be shallow.

I want you to check in. What do you do when you finish a task? What are your habits when you skip billing? How do you feel in your body when you skip billing?

I then asked her what was different when she was billing.

She said that she noticed when she was in the middle of a narrative and noticed the urge to check an email, and then she said to herself, “Girl, you a re literally in the middle of billing. All you have to do is complete the sentence.”

Notice what she did. First she caught the urge to move on to email. Then she paused and talked herself through completing the task. This is the process of re-wiring the brain I’m talking about. She’s conscious through this process. She’s present with herself.

I asked her what she noticed was different when she spoke to herself this way.

She said she noticed that not only did she bill more consistently throughout the day, but she didn’t beat herself up if she didn’t and instead just took a few minutes at the end of the day to wrap up. 

One of the things I like to do is really help lawyers sink into the mindset that they want to generate to get the results they want, and one way I do that is by asking them certain questions.

In this case, I asked her if she thought billing was important, and she said, “No, but it should be.” Which I will offer to you feels horrible. It’s like being forced to eat your vegetables as a kid. 

But she really wanted it to be important to her, so we looked at all the reasons why it was important to her. 

I’m going to pose that same question to you before I get into her answers.

Why might billing contemporaneously be important to you? What would change in your life if you did it?

Here’s what my client said.

She said:

• It saves me time because I don’t have to go back and forth between emails and calls and asking myself whether I responded to emails or whether or not I’d already billed for something.
• I don’t scramble at the end of the month to get things done, which feels horrible.
• When I bill contemporaneously I capture more hours, which means I get a bonus and a raise.
• I get to keep my sanity and not constantly worry about billing all month long.
• It feels good because I feel proud of myself at the end of the day that I got it done.
• But even more — this particular client has goals outside of her practice that require funding. And if she bills contemporaneously, she gets to fund those dreams. In fact, those dreams will take a lot longer and be a lot harder if she doesn’t bill contemporaneously.

So now I’ll ask you the same question I asked her, which is, “What are you losing out on by not billing contemporaneously?”

In her case, she’s losing out on creating the life she wants. Creating the dream life she sees for herself and her family.

What are you dreaming about right now that mastering your billing mindset would help you achieve?

• maybe you want to fund starting your own practice
• Maybe you want to travel more
• Maybe you want to be able to spend less time at the office and more time with family

Once you’re clear on that, you’ll want to weave that into a belief plan that you’ll practice, so you can bill more easily.

What’s a belief plan?

A belief plan is simply a set of thoughts that you practice thinking regularly when you notice the old thought come up.

The process of creating a belief plan requires you to try on different thoughts. Kind of like you’re in a clothing store and you’re trying on new outfits. You’re checking on how they feel on you. Or if you’re at a buffet, and you’re trying out different foods. What tastes good to you? This is a sensory experience and  not just repeating a sentence over and over hoping it will stick.

I’m going to help you through this process, but here’s some general guidelines.

You want the thoughts you practice to FEEL better than what you’re feeling now.

And you want to FEEL the impact of these thoughts in your body when you think them.

For example, my client’s thought originally was, “I’m super annoyed with billing because I’m busy.” She felt annoyed when she thought that. 

For her belief plan, she would notice the annoyed feeling, but then talk to herself with these thoughts:

It’s easier to bill now than at the end of the month. – neutral (which tells me that she believes it)

Billing is easy. — which may not feel good for you but for her it felt better than annoyed

I know how to bill.

I know how to get it done.

It’s happening.

I can do this.

Try each of these thoughts on.

Which ones feel true NOW?

That’s important because you don’t want to try to shove a square peg into a round hole. You want this to feel simple. That way your brain is more likely to accept it the more you practice it.

Then you’ll take the thoughts that you like and make post its.

Place them in areas you’re most likely to see them and practice them with the feeling in your body when you read them.

You can also get a index card and write the thoughts and feelings down that they generate. And when you sit at your desk read it and feel the feelings. Then do it again when you sit down at lunch.

Reread and re-feel these beliefs throughout your day, so if you’re feeling annoyed or notice yourself skipping billing, this will help you refocus.

You will see a difference.

I do this with different aspects of my business that I’m working on, and practicing my belief plan helps me stay focused and feel better, and that helps me perform better on whatever I’m working on.

This isn’t a one and done. You can have a belief plan, but you’ve got to actually think the thoughts.

Billing contemporaneously doesn’t have to be hard. It’s something you can do. As you make it a regular part of your day, you’ll make time for it. You’ll feel more and more like a lawyer who bills simply and easily. You’ll become that lawyer, and pretty soon people will be wondering what your secret is.

Then you can feel free to share this episode with them. 😉

And if you want to dive deeper into what’s possible for you whether it’s taking control of your time or growing your law practice, there’s two ways to work with me.

One is in my group coaching program Time Peace for lawyers™ where we focus on learning how to manage your time effectively. Part of that is doing things like billing contemporaneously, boundaries, and using a calendar to your advantage to create more peace in your practice.

The second way to work with me is privately in one-on-one coaching. I work with lawyers on time management and also growing their practices simply.

You can learn more about both on my website at dinacataldo.com

Thank you for being here today. I appreciate that you have so many options on your podcast player, so the fact that you’re here with me today means a lot to me.

Hope you have a lovely rest of your week.