We’ve all heard “time is money” but can saving time really make more money? The answer we’ve heard from clients over and over again is a resounding YES! We're sharing how saving time has saved hundreds of our attorney client’s money by helping them reclaim time in the office by working smarter, not harder, and managing business expenses by using per diem coverage attorneys as part of their everyday practice. 

“But I have to pay for per diem attorneys to appear on my cases, how does that help me make more money?”

We’ve been asked this question by so many of our clients who only use per diem coverage services when they are in a bind or have an emergency. We encourage our clients to think of it in a slightly different way.

What if you could add per diem services into your business model and look at per diem as a way to handle more cases, expand your practice and reach more clients? Now you can start to see the growth potential of using per diems.

What could you accomplish in a day if you had four more hours each day or one entire afternoon to focus on your firm? Could you meet with more potential clients? 

“For me," says Cesar Zuniga, Co-Founder and Managing Director of ZR Per Diem, “every court appearance was at least four hours out of my day. First, I would battle the traffic or the unpredictability of the trains to get to court. Then, some days, I stood in a security line or waited to check in with a judge. Finally, I’d start searching for my adversary, running up and down stairs or waiting on poorly working elevators, only to report back to the courtroom and sit while listening in on a long calendar of cases to be heard before mine. Not only was it exhausting, it was incredibly counterproductive. There I was, sitting in a courtroom, while calls from clients were going unanswered, motions were going unwritten and networking opportunities were lost, just to spend a morning in court to be told to come back on another day. It was really challenging to fit everything that needed to be done in a day and grow my practice.”

That was one of the things that led to the creation of ZR Per Diem Services.

Think of how much time we spend on court appearances, depositions, conferences, and other out of the office tasks that don’t move the needle on what our firms really need, which is more clients and resolved cases. No matter what kind of practice you have or what your specialty is, to be a successful practice, you need more clients and resolved cases.  

“We saw, firsthand, as practicing attorneys, how much time was wasted in court, not really moving cases forward or satisfying our client’s needs. It was really frustrating for us. There was so much work piling up back at the office that was really important work, but it was really impossible to get to everything in a timely manner,” says Connie Rinaldi, Co-Founder and Managing Director of ZRPD. “We were struggling to get more work and then afraid to take work on because we had a real capacity issue. It was impossible to get everything done.”

“First, we talked about hiring more staff attorneys. But we didn’t know how we were supposed to meet more payroll obligations if we didn’t have more money coming in. We did the math one day. Cesar and I thought ‘we can hire another attorney to work for us and pay that attorney $50,000 or $60,000 plus benefits and still we’d have to continue going to court ourselves because we had cases in so many different counties.’ That didn’t really solve our problem. Not to mention that we just didn’t have the extra income to support another salary.”  

On any given day, a busy firm’s calendar can pull staff in a million different directions. A deposition in one county, an oral argument, miles away. A client meeting downtown and a conference somewhere else.

How easy would it be to make sure everything was properly covered if you had a staff of over 350 attorneys at your disposal, but realistically, who can afford to add even one or two new hires to their staff? 

By using ZR Per Diem Services, you can have the best of both worlds. A huge roster of appearance attorneys at your fingertips without the added cost of hiring staff attorneys to handle your growing caseload.  

With ZR Per Diem Services, you gain an entire team of professionals, ready to handle your court appearance and deposition coverage needs, in over 80 counties, across 3 states, in every court, covering every specialty.

You only pay for the services you need and, with our easy to use coverage portal, Revolution, managing your calendar takes you and your staff less time, which means less administrative, non-billable work and more of the work that builds your bottom line.