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Attorneys who bill their hours--help me please!
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Anonymous
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I'm another Biglaw lawyer who does not cheat. You definitely can make your hours without cheating. It's just really hard work without much time off. To be blunt, that's why they pay us a lot.
I generally aim to bill at least 8 hours per day. If I am really focused, I can bill 8 hours by starting at 9am and leaving at 6pm. On the days I am less focused -- for example, going out for lunch rather than eating at my desk, or spending lots of time on DCUM, or leaving early for school functions -- then I need to work at home at night or put in some hours on the weekend. If I can bill 8 hours per day, that's 40 billable hours per week. With two weeks vacation, that's 50 weeks at 40 hours for 2000 billable per year. In 10+ years of following that routine, my lowest yearly total has been around 1800 hours, and my highest has been around 2400. Most years are 1900-2100. It sucks, but it pays my mortgage. If you want more time off, you should have been a radiologist. |
Anonymous
| PP again. I generally find that about 85% of my work time is billable. Also, there is extra time I spend on non-billable firm management projects, or on business development. Ultimately, to bill 2000 hours per year plus do the non-billable stuff, I am working about 55 hours per week. |
Anonymous
| I know very few lawyers who can work 9 hours and bill 8 of them. |
Anonymous
I was just thinking the same thing. Working 9am to 6pm and billing 8 hours means that all bathroom breaks, personal calls, lunch, chit chat, opening mail, etc. have to be done in one hour. I also always questioned the propriety of an attorney billing for the time spent eating lunch at his/her desk while working. I know a lot of attorneys who would bill time to clients for things I would not. For instance, a partner calls you to his office to talk about client x's project, but when you get there he is on the telephone. I would not bill client x for the time I spent cooling my heels in the hall waiting for the partner to be ready for the meeting. I also would not bill for ministerial tasks such as making copies, sending courtesy pdf copies to client, etc, but I know many of my colleagues would roll time for those tasks into a description for some other task, such as preparing the memorandum of support to a motion. My pet peeve is when associates bill time to type in line edits to documents partners have written onto hard copies of drafts documents. That is what your secretary should be doing. I am so happy to be out of the big firm life. I love the law, but have always hated the business aspect of it. |
Anonymous
I am PP from earlier. I'm not sure why you're skeptical, but that's my life. 0.2 morning crap 0.1 afternoon piss 0.2 talk to wife 0.3 eat brownbag lunch from home and surf news 0.2 extra time for fun! (rarely any chit-chat, and my secretary opens my mail) Welcome to the life of a lawyer. |
Anonymous
| PP again. I feel like you want to follow me around like Jim on the office trying to bust Dwight for "time theft." Is it really that important to you? |
Anonymous
If yu opened your own mail then you could have more billable time. Also. are your morning and afternon private functions in seconds, minutes, pr huors and you should do these things at home in the Am and home in the PM, as well as talking to your wife at home, and why do you need0.2 for fun? Isn't just being a lawyer fin in and of itself?. See, you are padding. |
Anonymous
OK,your secretary opens your mail, but do you read it, right? Do you bill for that? No time spent mentoring junior associates, recruiting interviews, associate meetings, practice group meetings, completing your time sheets, professional reading, summer associate crap, talking to friends or client development activities? OP wanted to know how people could honestly bill as many hours in the day as they do. She probably wonders because of guys like you who claim to properly bill 8 our of 9 hours a day. I mean honestly, is that your typical day? You don't talk to anyone other than your wife for 12 minutes each day. If you truly sit in your office and work all day without talking to anyone unless it is billable, well, I feel sorry for you. |
Anonymous
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I'll be honest. I totally padded my hours when I was an associate. I worked at a shitty firm that rode us about hours constantly. We had minimum billables of 2100 and one year the layoff decisions were based on hours--one woman was laid off who had missed the quota by less than 10 hours. I worked on a huge case for several years and partners were routinely billing 16+ hours a day/7 days a week to that matter.
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Anonymous
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OK,your secretary opens your mail, but do you read it, right? Do you bill for that?
Sure I read it. If it's client-related, I bill it. If it's not client-related, I don't bill it. I don't know what deluge of mail you're imagining, but my mail is pretty simple. About 1/3 is client-related. Another third is junk that my secretary thoughtfully puts in a separate pile so I can quickly flip through it and then trash it (and not bill for that). The final third is legal journals, which I read at home. I don't get much personal mail at the office, and when I do, I just deal with it on my own time.
Lots of it. Too much of it. See my two posts at the top of page 3 where I wrote about spending non-billable time on those things. Every time I interview some poor law student, she's robbing me of time with my family, and every meaningless practice group meeting where senior partners crow about their accomplishments is adding another hour of work for me in the evening.
Yes it's my typical day. But as I noted at the top of page 3, it's not every day. On days when I am not completely focused, I must make that work up by staying late, working after dinner, or working on weekends. It's a soul-crushing job, and that's why so many lawyers are happy to leave Biglaw for in-house positions. They don't call them golden handcuffs for nothing. My advice to OP is to (1) work on your focus and concentration so you spend more time on billable work and less on Facebook when you're in the office, and (2) be prepared to work extra hours outside the office. Some lawyers obviously choose to pad their bills, but I think most of us just work really hard and dream of being dermatologists. I know I sound bitter, but I'm actually a really nice person ... as long as you don't distract me from getting my work done so I can finish my shift and go home to my family. |
Anonymous
Don't you have a conscience and are you not ashamed that you billed a client for work never performed? You can't separate wwhat you do in the office from what you do at home. You, by your own admission, were dishonest at work when you were an associate, why should anyone believe that suddenly you have turned around and are honest? |
Anonymous
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OP - here is the best piece of advice I received when I was starting out at a Biglaw firm. The billing year is a marathon not a sprint, so you need to pace yourself. What I would do is keep a running total each week of the hours I billed for the month, with the goal of 165 hours a month. If I reached that goal in week three, then that was a good month to do a client development article. At the end of each month, I'd figure out how many hours I needed to reach my goal for the billable year (ours ran Oct 1 to Sep 31st) and then calculate the average monthly billable time I would need to reach that goal. By tracking my progress, I felt more in control of the pace and was able to adjust. For instance, there would be some months when I would not leave the office until I had billed at least 8 hours. It also relieved me of the stress that comes with realizing in June that you can only make your billable goal by billing an average of 200 hours a month for the next 4 months.
Finally, it was important at my firm to have an anchor months, a high hours month, every 3 months, because our time reports included a 3 month average for each associate. And, therefore, it was important to plant accordingly. I did litigation at my firm. There were certain months that tended to be slower than others (2nd half of November, December, August) and others that were typically busy (January, June and September) so I would plan vacations accordingly. Including planning for the exceptions. During 5 out of my 13 years in private practice, I had some sort of filing or discovery due Jan. 3rd or 4th. When I saw that coming, I did not take time between Dec. 26th and Jan. 2nd. As a result, I was one of the few people in the office that week and was able to bill a lot of time doing work others did not want to do. And the reverse was true. If I had no filings during that week between Christmas and New Years, I'd take the time off. There is no reason to be in the office if there is no billable work to do. |
Anonymous
Where did I say that I suddenly turned around and was honest? I don't work there anymore. And no, I'm not ashamed at all. And this makes no sense: "you can't separate wwhat you do in the office from what you do at home." |
Anonymous
ETA: 9:56 has good advice, with the caveat that junior/midlevel associates have no control over their schedules and were (at least at my firm) expected to hang around even if they had nothing to do. |
Anonymous
Youadmitted that you you padded your hours--charging a client for work that you did not perform. There are no degrees of honesty. |