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[quote=Anonymous]I find it a little surprising that a senior attorney would not understand the difference between time billed to client matters, for which the firm will be paid, and time billed to internal activities or pro-bono, for which the firm no only won't be paid but often cost money.

There are some gray area activities around business development and attorney development that you could argue will make the firm money in the long run, but which are an expense in the short run, but firms tend to be stingy about how these are allocated regarding billable hour requirements.

But even when a firm allows such activities to contribute to a billable hours requirement for purposes of bonus structure, they generally cap them. While your firm has a somewhat unusual system for billable requirements, it's very common for firms to set out billable targets for associates for them to qualify for certain bonuses, and there is no firm out there that would allow an associate to count hours billed to internal firm matters, as opposed to actual client work the firm can charge for, as a significant portion of that billing target.

Again, it is really surprising to me that you would not know this... I'm guessing you have spent most of your career in government service or an in-house position? This is very standard for law firms and even if you find a job elsewhere that does an annual billing target instead of a monthly one, you will not find a firm that doesn't make this distinction with its billables and tie it to bonus structure. It would be irresponsible for them to do otherwise because it can seriously hurt firm profitability if you don't incentivize attorneys to focus on client billings.[/quote]

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