Osborne Clarke Achieves Total Time Recording with Intapp Time
Osborne Clarke is an award-winning international legal practice. Over the past few years, the firm has grown rapidly, with 25 offices around the world. The core sectors the firm works in all thrive on innovation: digital business, energy, financial services, retail, life sciences, real estate, recruitment and transport.
Osborne Clarke is an international legal practice and their goal is simple: to help their clients and their people succeed in tomorrow’s world. In a business environment that’s facing new digital, economic, political and environmental challenges, they help their clients to gain competitive advantage by providing commercially focused insights and legal services. They’ve been around for over 250 years and have a presence across Europe, Asia and the US. Within their core sectors, their clients range from market leaders to fast-growth companies.
Flexible, Agile, Mobile Working
Given Osborne Clarke’s strength in digital business, it was no surprise that mobile working was high on the firm’s agenda. Under the leadership of IT Director Nathan Hayes, the IT team at Osborne Clarke investigated ways to enable lawyers to record time while they were on the move, as part of the shift toward a more agile and flexible workplace.
The IT team identified Intapp Time – with its support for mobile time recording, as well as desktop time entry and time capture – as the solution that best addressed the firm’s needs.
“Intapp Time was a straightforward choice for time entry on mobile devices,” says Nathan Hayes. “However, we wanted to fully understand how much value we would get from time capture, which automatically monitors key applications our lawyers use during the day, so we invested in a pilot to explore that.”
With so much of our client work conducted on a fixed-fee basis, we’ve always been conscious that improving lawyer productivity and efficiency can have a tremendous impact on our firm’s success.
RICHARD CLIFF, HEAD OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, OSBORNE CLARKE
Intapp Time has been an excellent visibility tool from Day 1.
Demonstrating ROI
The one-month pilot at Osborne Clarke included 21 users from three offices and five practice groups, and comprised all levels of fee earners ranging from partners to trainees.
The feedback on using the time capture functionality of Intapp Time was overwhelmingly positive. At the end of the pilot, more than 70% of users felt that time capture helped them identify billable time that would have otherwise been missed. Detailed analysis determined that each pilot user captured an additional 1.5 hours per week, based on a weighted average across all users – with significant implications for potential ROI when deployed firm-wide.
“Most importantly, our lawyers were able to gain a more accurate picture of where they were spending their time,” adds Hayes.
Total Time Recording
Osborne Clarke management then launched its Total Time Recording programme – a firm-wide initiative driven by UK managing partner Ray Berg. Total Time Recording emphasises the importance of gaining a full understanding of how Osborne Clarke employees spend their time – rather than focusing only on billable hours. With accurate data and analytic insights, the firm is able to determine the cost of individual matters and matter types – and also identify where it makes sense for the firm to invest, and how the firm might be able to increase efficiency.
The Total Time Recording initiative is focused on communication and changing behaviours, using multiple channels of communication including video clips featuring Ray Berg and other partners on the intranet; presentations at internal meetings; emails; and other activities to engage employees. The initiative is the result of a collaboration across IT, marketing, firm management and the finance teams.
“I’m most proud of our team’s approach to comprehensive service delivery. It’s never enough to simply offer amazing technology. We need to make sure that users are fully trained, that they have access to the systems they need at all times, and that support is in place to make them successful with those tools. Communication is key to enabling successful change management,” says Nathan Hayes. “By making our people aware of the benefits of Total Time Recording – both in terms of the success of Osborne Clarke as well as individual performance – we’ve succeeded in fundamentally changing how we manage time and resources as a firm.”
Executive Summary
Osborne Clarke, an award-winning international legal practice, deployed Intapp Time as part of a firm-wide Total Time Recording initiative.
Challenges
- Enable lawyers to effectively record time on the move, as part of firm’s commitment to flexible working
- Automate identification and capture of both billable and non-billable activity
- Improve management visibility to better understand true costs and areas where efficiency can be improved
Results with Intapp
- Successful launch of Total Time Recording programme – an initiative driven by senior management
- Raised employee awareness of the importance of understanding how they spend their billable and non-billable time
- Improved accuracy in time recording via Intapp Time’s time capture functionality
- Accurate data and analytical insights into the cost of delivering individual client matters and matter types, as well as how firm might be able to increase efficiency
- More effective time and resource management throughout the business
- Support for flexible, agile mobile working; real-time synchronization across desktop and mobile device
We’ve succeeded in fundamentally changing how we manage time and resources as a firm.
NATHAN HAYES, IT DIRECTOR, OSBORNE CLARKE