Law Firm Time Tracking Case Study: How Oziel Law Uses Anaqua’s WiseTime to Power a Smarter, More Agile Legal Practice

At Oziel Law, innovation isn’t just something they support—it’s how they operate.

Allan Oziel founded Oziel Law in 2012 with a clear vision: to create a boutique firm that matched the innovative spirit of its start-up clients. Based in Toronto, Canada, the firm provides comprehensive legal services, including corporate law, intellectual property, technology licensing, and M&A, all tailored to high-growth, innovative companies.

As their firm evolved, so did their approach to practice management. Oziel Law actively sought technology solutions to improve efficiency and client service. This philosophy led them to WiseTime, Anaqua’s AI-driven autonomous time tracking application, which has become integral to their operations.

In this interview, Allan explains how WiseTime delivers tangible business results by improving billable hour capture, streamlining operations, and strengthening client relationships. Allan describes how the right technology choices have enabled Oziel Law to build a more efficient, scalable practice that mirrors the agility of their startup clients.

Read the full law firm time tracking case study to find out more!

Can you tell us more about your firm, Oziel Law?

I am the founder of Oziel Law, a boutique law firm based in Toronto, Canada. Our team consists of around 15 professionals, including eight lawyers. What sets us apart is our focus on a specific type of client: high-growth, innovative startups – rather than a specific practice area.

We provide specialized corporate and startup legal services in intellectual property (IP) areas such as trademarks, copyrights, patents, technology licensing, contracts and transactions. We offer end-to-end legal services to high-growth, innovative startup clients from business formation and IP protection to capital raising. Ultimately, we also facilitate a successful exit if that is our client’s goal.

How does Oziel Law differentiate itself from the competition?

We identified a gap in servicing the high-growth, innovative startups in Canada. While large law firms offered services to these startups across multiple practice areas, these firms often operated in silos. Startups had to eventually work with different sets of lawyers from multiple practice teams, such as the IP and corporate transactions groups.

We saw an opportunity to create a boutique alternative: a firm that could deliver high-quality legal expertise with a more integrated, client-focused approach tailored specifically to startups. Our philosophy is based on a tight-knit model that addresses our clients’ needs through cross-trained lawyers specialized in multiple practice areas.

As an innovative law firm, we focus heavily on implementing cutting-edge technologies for both internal and external processes. Technology has redefined how we provide our services to clients and aided in managing our practice. As a small law firm, we have the distinct advantage of quickly adopting cloud-based scalable technologies. As a result, we’ve had really great success in building a hyper-efficient law firm using advanced technologies.

What time-tracking system did your firm use before WiseTime, and what challenges did you face at the time?

At Oziel Law, we always evaluate what tools are optimal for us, even if we already have an existing tool that completely satisfies our current needs.

Initially, we tracked time spent on various matters through our practice management software, which allowed us to docket activities and start timers. But, as our practice grew, we needed a timekeeping tool with greater accuracy and automation capabilities.

One of the least enjoyable parts about legal practice is to be constantly aware of your activities and docket them. What’s more, at our firm, we constantly switch between tasks and move across different documents, phone calls, Slack, and note-taking systems. This can lead to significant stress for timekeepers, who may struggle to recall and document every activity.

We became concerned after realizing that we were not capturing as much billable time as our team was working.  We wanted a solution that was easier for people, relied less on memory, and was more accurate and defensible.

What was the process for selecting timekeeping software and how did you select WiseTime?

We needed a tool that could automate time capture, reduce manual errors, provide better visibility for reporting, and free up our team to focus on more important work. In addition, the tool should integrate natively with our practice management system Clio.

We wanted to work with software providers who were committed to continuous improvement. We didn’t want a static product—we wanted one that would evolve based on client feedback.

After researching a lot on the available timekeeping tools, we chose Anaqua’s WiseTime solution. Since then, we have been very satisfied with our use of WiseTime. And I can confirm that it has evolved significantly to keep up with our requirements.

“We’re very happy with WiseTime and how we have worked with Anaqua’s software over the past few years. We are excited to explore opportunities to further enhance the product and see how it continues to evolve.” (Allan Oziel)

How has Anaqua’s WiseTime helped you in improving timekeeping at Oziel Law?

“WiseTime is the easiest timekeeping software that we’ve ever encountered. It has really helped us address the key pain points such as automating time capture, reducing manual errors, freeing up time for more valuable work, and improving reporting accuracy. WiseTime allows us to capture more time and work more efficiently.” (Allan Oziel)

The WiseTime software has helped us improve our total number of billable hours that would otherwise be lost. It is difficult for us to precisely quantify ROI due to team growth and disjointed systems but as the managing partner, I strongly feel that there have been efficiency improvements for our firm.

Integration with our practice management system, Clio, is a big plus. Also, WiseTime tagging activities automatically with the appropriate matter reference is very helpful. This streamlines the process and reduces the chance of errors.

Law firm time tracking case study

What are the other features of WiseTime that you and your team have found useful?

“Automated time capture is the standout aspect of WiseTime. It tracks your activity without needing to start and stop timers. The user-friendly interface requires significantly fewer clicks, has intuitive workflows, and consolidates activities more effectively.” (Allan Oziel)

One of the most impactful features is the ability to select multiple activities and either create a new timesheet entry or add them to an existing one. This was exactly what we were looking for. It’s made a significant difference in how we manage our time entries.

I also really appreciate the visual UI component at the top of the calendar that shows whether you docketed and submitted your dockets for the day. This feature is incredibly useful and adds a lot of clarity.

The AI-enabled narrative feature is helpful in summarizing the tasks and it eliminates the need to manually create the descriptions. Our attorneys can fine tune whatever has been formulated by the tool. It enables us to provide clients with personalized documentation of services rendered with greater transparency on invoices.

At Anaqua, our focus has been on continuous improvement. Are there any new features you're looking forward to in the upcoming releases of WiseTime?

Indeed, we love the continuous improvement in WiseTime and how it operates for law firm time tracking. One of the areas we are providing input to Anaqua is to enhance the analytics and reporting capabilities from WiseTime. Currently, we pull data from multiple systems including WiseTime, Clio, our CRM, and our accounting tools. It would be great if WiseTime could push its reporting data directly into Clio, allowing us to run consolidated reports from a single platform.

Note from editor: Anaqua recently released WiseTime’s Enterprise Data Connect, an integration that supports users by having posted time data available in their reporting tool of choice through Google BigQuery.

You've been using Anaqua’s WiseTime for over four years. What has made you feel secure and loyal to WiseTime for so long?

As the old saying goes, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” But that isn’t sufficient for me. I need to see continuous improvement in the product.

Looking back, Anaqua has always shown a commitment to listening to clients’ feedback and implementing new features and improvements to its law firm time tracking solution. For instance, the user interface enhancement. This responsiveness builds trust and gives us confidence that our inputs are valued, taken into consideration, and acted on.

Read the full law firm time tracking case study.