Gunderson Dettmer Deploys Smart Time Professional to Improve Attorney Time Recording Practices

07 February 2012

Smart WebParts, the preeminent provider of timekeeping software for law firms, today announced that Gunderson Dettmer, LLP, the nation’s leading business law firm for entrepreneurs, emerging growth companies and venture capitalists, has deployed Smart Time to improve attorney time recording practices and boost revenue.

With over 100 lawyers in four offices – Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and San Diego – Gunderson Dettmer represents companies in every stage of development, from incorporation, to start-up through entry into public markets and beyond.

According to Jenny Goshorn, the Chief Administrative Officer at Gunderson Dettmer, “Smart Time’s automatic capture is a great help to our attorneys, ensuring that they can easily prepare complete and accurate timesheets. With the Smart Time journal, they don’t have to mentally reconstruct their day in order to fill in timesheets – it’s all right there for them.”

Smart Time is an intuitive time entry and time capture software tool that gives timekeepers perfect recall when they prepare their timesheets. By providing the attorney a detailed journal of their day’s activities, Smart Time answers the question, “What did I do today and is it billable?” Since Smart Time finds missed or “leaked” time that might not otherwise get billed, it can increase a firm's billable hours and ultimately its profitability.

Smart Time polls a firm’s systems and desktops to find information about every event the timekeeper completed throughout the day. It finds emails, calendared meetings, phone calls, mobile calls, research, documents, dictation and more. Event data is cross-referenced by the Smart Time Relationship Engine to assign client matter codes, while supplementary data is added to the event descriptions to help jog the timekeeper’s memory. Users can access the system via the Smart Time desktop, a nightly automated email report or via a mobile device.

Scott Armienti, Chief Financial Officer at Gunderson Dettmer, made the decision to implement Smart Time after a pilot program demonstrated the software’s impact on the bottom line. “Our initial findings were consistent with the various white-paper studies on ‘lost time’ and once you do that math it is a no-brainer to implement. We have had a long partnership with Todd and members of his team and we look forward to continuing that”.

Todd Gerstein, CEO and founder of Smart WebParts, emphasized his company’s commitment to reducing timekeeping burdens and improving firm profitability. “We are very pleased to have Gunderson Dettmer join our growing list of clients using Smart Time,” he said. “We look forward to supporting the firm’s efforts to improve client service while increasing attorney timekeeping efficiency.”