Big Law Discussions
Billable Hours

so, how many firm laptops' worth of billable time would you say you waste in a given month dealing with delays caused by your firm laptop?

What is the typical turn around time for submitting proposals?

I have a lot of billable work I need to do but prospective clients seem to put deadlines within a couple days of the request...

What approach do you prefer to take when a client thinks the billable hours on an invoice are too high, but you think they are reasonable based on the work performed/deliverables?

Do any of my fellow criminal defense attorneys feel like they were in a completely different profession than 98% of the attorneys that you know who do civil or transactional work? I read the posts about billable hours and the cost of litigation etc... I am here getting flat fees that range anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to many thousands of dollars. I am constantly chasing the bad payers on a payment plan but it seems 1000 times better than a billable hour. 

Monday morning and the only thing that goes through my mind is wow I hate my job. Between the strict requirement of releasing billing time daily, high billable goal and I guess a heavy workload (and everything that comes with living through a pandemic) it’s hard to start my day excited for work. And I hate it. Makes me question why I’m doing this for a living.

My firm’s IT (especially system saving and file locating function) is so bad 😐😞 and they keep doing updates no one asked them for just to mess with the stuff we already got a hang of without doing anything about the issues we actually need fixed. Anyone else in a similar boat? Do you bill the client for the time it takes to fix the IT issue (or IT inefficiency generally, like time taken to find a file in a convoluted system)? Or is that supposed to be our non-billable time?

I’m just starting up as a freelancer after years of being a full time agency employee. Any big watch outs before finalizing my contract? What about frequency of invoicing and defining billable time? Any guidance on freelancing dos and don’ts is much appreciated.

Anyone else have family members who don’t understand that I can’t take personal calls/texts all the time because I’m trying to meet my daily billable goal?

I got an offer letter to switch to plaintiff side L&E. Base is actually slightly higher plus better benefits and commission/bonus possibilities. I’ve been in defense for 2 years, but started out of law school at a plaintiffs side firm. Is there any downside to bouncing back and forth between plaintiff and defense? The lure of no billable hours is strong appealing to me at this point in my personal life...

For those of you in house, do you actually read the articles written up by law firms? I’m constantly being asked to do this non billable work and I’m not in a place to reject and want to know the actual value of this exercise.

Most billable hours in a day (within 24 hours)? Mine has been 20 and I’ve hit that 2x this year.

Is it a wise career decision to go from a national firm to a local but strong firm? Practiced with the national firm for a year and a half. The firms are the same type of law, but the smaller firm has less billable requirements and is offering higher salary/better bonus structure as well as more independence such as ability to completely run own case load.

Would you leave a firm if you could not get enough billable work to consistently hit the firms’ billable was requirement? I was hired into a specific department over a year ago and (con’t in comments)

If you are slow on billable work, how frequently do you check in with partners letting them know you have availability? I want to cover my butt and show I’m looking for work but also don’t want to annoy them.

Can anyone recommend an app or software for tracking billable hours to make it easier to put together and submit timesheets? I work for a small firm and all of our billing/invoicing is done manually. Every couple of weeks I go through my notes to type up my timesheets and I’m wondering if there’s an app that can record my time as I work and then put that all together categorized by client to submit for invoicing. I don’t need to note how much a particular client pays per hour.

Our partner, who art unavailable
Hallowed be thy name
They project won
They work be done
Though not within client budget
Give us this day our billable hours
And forgive us our bench time
As we forgive those who take poorly timed PTO
And lead us not to industry
But deliver us to client site.
🙏

How are firms handling the economic downturn in terms of billable hour requirements for associates? Are annual billable requirements being updated or mitigated in any way? Curious to see how other firms are handling this issue, and also afraid of not being able to take any time off until 2021 😳

I need an assistant/paralegal. Probably part time at first. I live/work in a small city in Oklahoma, solo practice. I would like approx 10 billable hours/week (if part time) from them. What do i look for in one? Pay amount? (Most here make around $12/hour). Incentives for bonus money?

So who else here is experiencing plummeting billable hours and exponential weight gain since this whole WFH thing started? Bought snacks for 30 days, finished in 48 hours.

Received an offer at an insurance defense firm for $75K. 2K billable hours requirement with bonuses for going above. Is this offer any good? And should I attempt to negotiate? Any help would be appreciated!

What does being terminated as an associate look like during WFH? Our office is having a serious drop in billable hours. If one of us was terminated, how awkward is it to get things from the office?

Does any of your firm require you to have 45 billable hours per week in June or July?

Audit dept issued a year-round 50 hour minimum now. So basically if you have less than 50 billable hours assigned in a week, you're required to ask for more work. It's fucking summer. I'm done with this place

Two of my really good friends at work have had their work dry up in the past few months (because of the Rona). I'm like two months ahead of them on hours, and they're worried about not making their minimum billable requirements.

Feel sort of guilty and try to avoid talking about hours with them. I'm just hoping the firm doesn't give them trouble...

I work full time in a (foreign) country where employees are protected pretty well.
Our agency lost clients and they need to lay people off. I’m on that list too.
They are convincing us to accept a voluntary resignation with 5 months of salary. I can refuse (law will protect me) and stay on but I have barely any billable work to do and of course this will create some toxic relationships with management. (CONT)

Is there an appropriate way to turn down an assignment because it is non-billable? Two of the partners I work for keep asking me to write client bulletins and articles with them, which is great, but now I’m starting to worry about meeting my billable hours requirement.

No billable work for the past three days.......taking CLEs to take advantage of my time, but still feel lazy as hell.

Salary comparison question here. Class of 2016, been doing lit ever since but switched firms last summer from boutique to lit/ins defense firm of about 30 lawyers. 2000 billable req. and salary just shy of $80k w/potential for quarterly bonus for billable hours and yearly bonus for receipts by 12/31. I’m in the South in a medium sized city (think ~700k not like ATL). Not looking to see what all you big law folks are bringing in but just curious about where I stand when review happens.

Ever been promoted at your firm while on a project and you have to be rolled off bc your billable rate is higher than what the client has budgeted? Or does your firm find this as an opportunity to renegotiate the SoW?

2nd day straight with zero billable work. The end is near

Those who have seen a drastic reduction in their billable hours with no pay cuts, layoffs, furloughs, etc., what have you done to stir up some work and keep yours hours at a reasonable level?

How to deal with not being staffed on deals and seeing others in your year be staffed? When asking partners directly for work, they refer you to the staffing partners. When asking staffing partners (repeatedly), they say “thanks for interest, we will have something soon.” Weeks and weeks pass by and you’re always below where you should be for billable hours (at this point, very far below). All reviews are essentially perfect and no negative feedback. Extremely frustrating and discouraging.

When lateraling to another defense firm, is it necessary to show billable hours at current firm?

At what point would a firm start questioning an associate’s billable hours total? Since WFH, I’ve taken on a few doc review projects to keep hours up but I feel like some clients/peers are skeptical

Billable Hours to Salary Ratio NYC

May leave my job for another and new job has a 2,000 hour billable requirement. What is a fair salary? (3+ yrs experience) any billable hour to salary ratios?

Firm just cut pay by 20%. I’m busier than ever, above my billable targets, and have a 100% realization ratio. This sucks. That’s all.