Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a program that tracks the time you spend in client-related email (see article below), a site that enables you to compare smartphones, a new online practice management and document assembly application, and an iOS app with a legal dictionary, settlement calculator and other such tools for lawyers. Don't miss the next issue.
Automatically Track Time Spent on Client-Related Email
Late last year, Business Insider, a publication that breathlessly covers startup companies and new technologies, admitted that the world is not changing that fast. The article noted that every minute people post 695,000 Facebook status updates (impressive), but send 168 million email messages (off the charts). Among lawyers, the numbers are likely even more skewed in email's favor. Because lawyers spend so much time in email, that's where they lose the most billable time. Did you spend 25 minutes or 35 minutes replying to your client? Most lawyers are honest so they under-guesstimate, but accuracy is not a crime. The new version of a popular time tracking program can help.
Chrometa 2012 … in One Sentence
Chrometa 2012 automatically captures and categorizes the time you spend working on your computer plus it can track offline time too.
The Killer Feature
Previous versions of Chrometa would tell you how much time you spent in Outlook or in Gmail throughout the day, enabling you to capture all that time. But it didn't list the time per message so if you read 25 work-related email messages, and sent 10 you'd have to look back at your messages and apportion the time among them -- a fair amount of work.
Chrometa 2012 now shows you the time spent per message, identifying each message by subject line, to/from/cc fields, and if applicable even the email folder name.
Chrometa 2012 achieves this feat via two free plugins for Microsoft Outlook and Gmail respectively. The Outlook plugin works with Outlook 2007 and 2010, while the Gmail plugin works with Google's Chrome browser on Mac and Windows.
"Our new Chrometa plugins for Microsoft Outlook and Gmail close the loop on email," Chrometa CEO Brett Owens told us. "Once you install our email plugins, you'll never lose another minute of billable email time or waste time reconstructing that billable time."
Other Notable Features
Chrometa 2012 captures time on Macs and PCs. It notices when you stop using your computer such as for a phone call and can ask you about it so you can also track offline time. You access and manage your captured time using a web browser.
Chrometa 2012 can automatically categorize the time it captures. For example, now that Chrometa can capture time spent per email message, you can create a rule for each client or even matter. Then Chrometa will place all email time per client or per matter into that category. The rules work for all the time Chrometa captures (e.g., time spent in Word documents). When you log into your Chrometa account, you can convert all the time captured in a category into time entries with one click.
Also new in Chrometa 2012 is the ability to create bills (invoices). In other words, Chrometa can now serve as your billing program, not just your time capture program. You can send bills directly from Chrometa via email or export them into DOC, PDF, or XLS formats.
If you already use a billing system, Chrometa offers a growing number of integrations, including Clio, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, PCLaw, and Timeslips. You can also export Chrometa time entries and import them into virtually any billing system.
What Else Should You Know?
You can choose from three versions of Chrometa (all single user) or from two versions of Chrometa for Teams (for multiple users). Pricing for Chrometa starts at $19 per month, whereas pricing for Chrometa for Teams starts at the same price per user per month. Learn more about Chrometa 2012.
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