Hate Tracking Time? Chrometa Can Help

Is Wasting Time Costing You Money?

As a practicing attorney, I am always looking for ways to make our firm run smoother. I’ve been coming back from the office later and later. Although it made my wife happy, I was finding myself exhausted. I needed to become more efficient with my time. As such, I decided to test drive a time management program called Chrometa 2.0. If you are not familiar with it, I suggest you give it a trial run. In my case, it has made me a more efficient attorney.

Some benefits were obvious. As the program ran in the background, it was recording how much time I was spending preparing documents. If it took me 20 minutes to prepare a letter, the program indicated it under active time. It was a great help for when I was preparing billing. I could see how long I spent preparing my blog and how much time it took to update our firm’s website. It even has a feature where you can enter the time you spend on phone calls. In some cases, I realized I was actually underbilling.

For me, the greatest benefit was the wasted time the program was recording. The results were an eye opener. 30 minutes spent watching you tube clips of yodeling dogs, 25 minutes searching for friends on Facebook to see if any of them were bald, 18 minutes of Googling my name to see if I was famous yet. There it was in black and white. I was wasting time. Chrometa was my wake up call. The reason I was staying so late at the office was not necessarily all the work I had to do. It was because I was wasting my time watching clips of the Daily Show. Chrometa is like having your mother standing over you to make sure you do your homework. Every time I have the urge to wander the internet, I tend to balk knowing it will be recorded by Chrometa. The program is very easy to use. It runs quietly in the background. It does, however, have a drag and drop feature where you can categorize all of your documents. If you happen to step away from your computer, Chrometa starts an “away timer.” When you get back, it reminds you to input what you were working on. The program can even list your email messages by subject line which includes how much time you spent reading the message and how much time it took to respond to it. More importantly, the program has an advanced tagging feature of Word and Word Perfect documents. When you want to transfer your time entries into your billing system, the program will sort them by each client or matter. Another nice feature is advanced privacy controls. No one has to know that you wasted your day on Twitter. Chrometa 2.0 runs in Windows XP and Vista, and sells for an affordable introductory price of $99, which includes unlimited email support. You can try it for free for 30 days. Learn more about Chrometa 2.0. _________________________________ Want to read another review of Chrometa 2.0 Check out the Technolawyer Newsletter. If you haven’t signed up yet, you are missing out on some great advice and product reviews from lawyers across the country.