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I’m in M&A so my time entries will be like one entry for 10 hours and the narrative for that 10 hours will be “attention to purchase agreement; call with client re purchase agreement; attention to ancillary agreements; attention to signing matters”. There’s no breakdown for how much time was spent on each individual task and I don’t need a separate time entry for each task.
A5 I think that’s too much but it depends on your client. I mainly work with PE clients who get a bill with just one line item: the name of our firm and the total bill amount. And they pay it. So I just write attention to purchase agreement or revise agreement. There’s really no reason why I would need to go into more detail. However I have coworkers who work with smaller clients who do look over the bill and they would appreciate your time entries but I still think just attention to agreement is sufficient versus what specifically you revised, given that you could have a lot of revisions to say a 100 page agreement and that seems impractical to list out every change you made…
Your example is not block billing because it’s just one task. Block billing is one time entry for multiple tasks for the same matter. Like collaborate with c re y; review z agreement; draft consents; etc. Sometimes you have to put parenthesis after each one with the amount of time for each task, but not always.
Mentor
When you have to add the time for each task, it's no longer block billing. Block billing is one time entry for the day. Then you describe everything you did that day without providing a time breakdown. Assigning a time to each task is basically fiction writing. You only do it when clients ask because it really doesn't make any sense. I research, analyze, review, and write at the same time. These are not separate tasks. But if asked, you break the brief into parts: conduct legal research regarding these topics and write section of brief arguing such and such.
Subject Expert
It really depends on what you mean. As a transactional attorney we all "block bill" in the traditional sense because we only have one time entry per day for each matter. But many transactional attorneys will say that one large block of time spent on a single task or with a single description is "block billing" and should be avoided (even if it is truthful) because it gets flagged in our client's billing management system. People will teach you strategies to avoid this but the key is to be more descriptive and varied in your billing descriptions.
Can you provide an example of a time entry narrative ?
My team in Florida has a few attorneys fee experts and I’ve done some research for them on this. The law is likely different in different states, but in Florida block billing is what the posters said above—multiple tasks for one time entry WITHOUT breaking down how much time was spent on each task. The problem with that kind of billing (at least in Florida litigation) is that if you ever have a dispute over the reasonableness of the fees, a fee expert won’t be able to decide whether the amount of time you spent on each task was reasonable. Bc there is no indication. So we avoid it at all costs and break down every task with brackets.
I’ve had partners tell me it’s “ok” to block bill for certain clients bc they don’t care but it is definitely not allowed/frowned upon in Florida. So my direct supervisors always tell me to do it right. I’m so used to it that it honestly doesn’t matter anymore
Draft brief (8.0)