We speak to Eugenia Frenzel, Director of Pricing and Practice Management Economics at Perkins Coie, about the ways Clocktimizer has been supporting their goals by providing clear data on fee quotes, budgets and firm-wide profitability. Perkins Coie LLP is an internationally renowned US firm of over 1,100 lawyers, headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Recognized, both among their peers and with awards, as incredibly client-driven. They lead the charge in looking for innovative ways to improve client relationships through transparency.
For Eugenia and her team, Clocktimizer presents a unique solution to a combination of problems. From her timekeeper days through her legal operations experience, she has realized that assigning phase and task codes is often an inaccurate way of categorizing activities on a matter. In many cases, they are not applied at all. With Clocktimizer’s unique natural language processing technology to read narratives, Eugenia and her team have been able to create more accurate fee quotes. By letting the platform automatically read and categorize data, the pricing team has been able to save time and gain a clearer oversight of the data needed to make good pricing decisions throughout the matter lifecycle.
LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION
For Eugenia, much of her work had been a painstaking analysis of manual categorization and activities until Clocktimizer. “Previously, the only way to dig into a matter was to read through the timecard narratives to understand who did what work, how long it took, and what was actually done. There were no phase and task codes, so I often had to spend two days coding timecard narratives. I was delighted to discover a system that could do all of this work for me!”
Notably, Clocktimizer addressed one of the most pressing problems facing the pricing team: how to quickly and easily present vast quantities of complex data in one place. “Proper analysis takes time. In law firms, data is often in very different places. It’s not enough to do a data dump. You need to be able to analyze data and then be able to present it in a way that makes sense. Clocktimizer does that.” says Eugenia.
GETTING STARTED WITH CLOCKTIMIZER
Implementing new technology can be stressful, no matter the firm size. Rollouts often take up time and resources, which detract from normal firm functions. For Eugenia, Clocktimizer was a refreshing change. “Clocktimizer has been the easiest piece of technology to install. You spend a few days in a sandbox getting comfortable with the dashboard and the technology. Additionally, the interface itself is very intuitive, so you don’t need a huge amount of training.”
MORE ACCURACY, LESS CONFUSION
For Eugenia, Fridays have become a lot less stressful since she and her team have been leveraging Clocktimizer. “Fridays are usually the busiest days of the week for me, and inevitably they are also when you get last-minute calls for fee quotes, while you are getting ready to go home. To be able to pull up the request on Clocktimizer, and do it quickly and with great detail, I think that’s a double win. The partner is happy, the client is happy, and you are happy. Ultimately, we are here to provide top-notch service to our clients. When that goes right, that’s what we are here for.”
It is difficult to settle on what is the most useful or key aspect of Clocktimizer. “Asking me to pick my favorite feature is like asking me to pick my favorite child. It’s probably the fee comparison, and the fact that you can pick your top activities and then it averages them out. You can easily flip it into a budget. Visuals are also stunning; nothing comes close when presenting work that was done on a matter. This is truly an example when a picture is worth a thousand words. I think that the whole lifecycle aspect from a pricing perspective is great
WHY EUGENIA RECOMMENDS CLOCKTIMIZER
Besides the ease of implementation and the uniqueness of the Clocktimizer solution, Eugenia has enjoyed working with the Clocktimizer team and development schedule at three very different firms. “We live in a world where you are constantly promised of things to come. It’s really refreshing to work with the Clocktimizer team, who are all very open and honest. Clocktimizer is rolling out new features all the time, so I have to make sure every member of my team gets full training to be able to make the most of the tool.”
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