Capture every six minutes

Ravi and Callum look at time capture from both sides of the timesheet. Ravi shows what a single missed unit costs across a year. Callum, an associate at Ashgrove Legal, walks through his day before and after he started recording time as he worked.

It is for lawyers who record their own time, and for the partners and practice managers who review it. You will leave with a daily routine you can start the next morning. Have last week’s diary open and you can test the routine against it as you watch.

Why time capture, again

Every firm has had the time recording conversation, usually more than once. This session is different because it is practical rather than motivational. Callum shows his real timesheets from before and after he changed how he works, and the difference is mostly in entries of 0.1 and 0.2.

There is no lecture about billable targets. The focus is on recording the work you already do, accurately and without it taking over your day.

The session is short on purpose. Forty minutes is about the length of the routine Callum describes, spread across a working week.

How the session runs

The recording is 41 minutes, split into four chapters that follow the agenda. Ravi presents the numbers and Callum works through his own examples on screen. Each chapter ends with one thing to try the next day, so you can watch a section at a time and put it into practice before moving on.

Agenda

1. What one missed unit costs a year

2. Recording time from email and documents

3. A five-minute end-of-day check

4. Narratives clients do not query

What you will see

• What one missed unit costs a year: Ravi works through the arithmetic at a few common rates, then shows how to estimate your own firm’s gap from a week of diaries.

• Recording time from email and documents: Callum files an email to a matter and records the time in the same step, then does the same from a document he is drafting.

• A five-minute end-of-day check: the routine Callum runs before he leaves, using his day view, sent items and call log.

• Narratives clients do not query: before-and-after examples from real invoices, rewritten so the client can see what each unit bought.

Callum’s before-and-after week is the centre of the session. In the week before he changed his routine he recorded 33.1 hours. In a comparable week afterwards he recorded 35.6, and almost all of the difference was short entries he had previously let go.

Callum is honest about what did not stick. He tried recording every task the moment it ended and gave up after a week. The routine that lasted was simpler: record from email as he files it, and run the end-of-day check before he leaves.

Before you watch

• Open last week’s diary and timesheet side by side. You will use them in the second half.

• Note your charge-out rate, so you can work out your own figure during Ravi’s section.

• If you supervise others, bring one team member’s anonymised timesheet to review against the narrative examples.

If you manage a team, watch it with them. The section on narratives works best as a discussion, with real entries from your own firm’s last billing run on the table.

Your hosts

Ravi Kapoor is a billing specialist at Filebird. Before joining, he ran billing at a 30-lawyer firm. Callum Reid is an associate at Ashgrove Legal and records his own time in Filebird every day. His before-and-after timesheets are shown with his permission and client details removed.

Recorded on 2 September 2026 and available on demand. The slides include Ravi’s one-page worksheet for estimating what missed units cost at your own rates. Check with your law society or state bar whether a recorded session counts towards your CPD points (CLE credits in the US).

Common questions

Does recording time from email slow you down? Callum timed it: about ten seconds per email once it became a habit, which is less than reconstructing the entry later.

What about fixed-fee work? Record it anyway. Ravi explains why time on fixed-fee matters is the only way to know whether the fee is right.

Is this only for junior lawyers? No. Partners often have the largest gaps, because their days are made up of short calls and reviews.

Does any of this need Filebird? The routine works in any system that records time against matters. Filebird makes the email step faster, because filing and recording happen in one place, but the habit is the part that matters.

What if my firm does not record time in six-minute units? The routine still works. Ravi shows how the same checks apply to firms that record in five-minute or quarter-hour units.

After you watch

The slides include Ravi’s one-page worksheet for estimating what missed units cost at your own rates. Our guide, Every six minutes, sets out the daily routine in full, and the article What a 0.1 actually costs your firm has the arithmetic if you need to make the case to your partners.

If you try the routine for a week, run the end-of-day check against the same week’s diary on the Friday. Most people find it is the week they recorded most accurately all year.