How Mayer LLP made timekeeping keep pace with a fast-growing firm

At a glance

Challenge

• Attorneys rebuilt their time from memory and lost the small calls and emails in between.

• Entries had to be edited and approved by hand before they could go on a pre-bill.

• Client billing guidelines were scattered across systems, so mistakes were caught late in the billing process.

Solution

• PointOne captures activity from email, calendar, meetings and documents automatically.

• Uploaded billing guidelines become rules that check entries before pre-bill.

• A people-first rollout: hybrid training in each office, with leadership testing it first.

Results

• 80% of purchased seats are active.

• 20–30 minutes saved per person, every day.

Two perspectives on the same problem

Since 2019, Mayer LLP has grown from one office to seven. Today, 420 people, including 225 lawyers and paralegals, work across Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas. Processes that once depended on individual habits now had to work consistently across a much larger firm.

Timekeeping brought two leaders’ perspectives together. Chief Operating Officer Malinda Hicks is close to the human side of operations, focusing on the impact of new processes on the people. Director of Finance Lindsey Saville follows the data to ensure entries are accurate, client-ready, and able to move through billing.

"I have the feelings and the soft side, and Lindsey has the math side, and so together we always tease about us being a whole person."

Malinda K. Hicks, Chief Operating Officer, Mayer LLP

Hicks noticed the toll that their previous manual time consuming process was taking on Mayer’s lawyers. Entries that Saville reviewed varied in detail, language, and adherence to client requirements, leading to write-offs and revenue leakage.

"It's very easy to take a phone call, send an email, take a phone call, send an email, and then you may record an email or a phone call, but you're not gonna get all four. Getting someone to recreate their time entries is the biggest struggle."

Lindsey Saville, Director of Finance, Mayer LLP

Every entry was typed, edited and approved before pre-bill. Client billing guidelines were stored in different places, so mistakes were often found late in the billing process.

With each new office and timekeeper added, the same friction multiplied at greater scale.

A system for lawyers and finance

Mayer needed a system that could capture the work as it happened and apply client rules before entries were submitted to billing.

"We were looking for something a little bit more AI that could capture their time, number one, and help them bill in a way that made sense. PointOne for us was by far the top platform that we found."

Malinda K. Hicks, Chief Operating Officer, Mayer LLP

PointOne creates a draft record of the day from activity across email, calendar, meetings and documents. The finance team directly uploaded each client's entire billing guidelines to PointOne, and the platform automatically converted those into rules to be mechanically enforced on all entries before they reach pre-bill.

"Rather than someone saying 'I had a video conference call,' we're seeing the actual data. In addition, billing and finance support attorneys by uploading the billing guidelines of the firm and the clients, and it literally creates rules automatically enforced on their time entries."

Lindsey Saville, Director of Finance, Mayer LLP

A process that had lived partly in memory and partly in scattered systems could now happen all in one workflow.

Rolling out change office by office

A timekeeping platform is only effective when lawyers actually use it, so Hicks designed the PointOne rollout around Mayer’s people by focusing on the user experience, training and adoption.

She tested PointOne herself. Founding and Managing Partner Zach Mayer volunteered to try it before anyone else and champion the solution across the firm. Saville stress tested the results for source attribution and compliance.

This collaboration connected leadership, lawyers, operations and finance instead of leaving timekeeping with any one function. Hicks then ran hybrid training sessions across offices, creating a repeatable onboarding playbook that easily scales as Mayer continues to grow.

"What everybody is looking for in our clients is they want it to be fast, they want it to be accurate, and they want it to be good. And you can never have all three at the same time."

Malinda K. Hicks, Chief Operating Officer, Mayer LLP

For Mayer, PointOne created a path closer to all three: faster timekeeping for attorneys, more accurate records for finance, and more consistent entries for clients.

Results across the firm

Today, passive timekeeping adoption at Mayer exceeds 80%, an exceptional rate for legal software. Internal champions helped drive that adoption by showing colleagues they could save 20 to 30 minutes a day while capturing work that might otherwise go unrecorded.

The impact appears at every stage of the process. Attorneys no longer begin with a blank timesheet. Finance can review activity and apply billing rules earlier. Operations can standardize the workflow for new hires.

Timekeeping started as a business-side process, but improving it changed the day-to-day experience of the people doing the legal work.

"It's kind of like going from a typewriter to a computer. Timekeeping used to be unbearable, and now it's manageable. Now it's easy."

Malinda K. Hicks, Chief Operating Officer, Mayer LLP