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I’ve been in an “assess + plan” phase for a while: “Assess contents of plaintiff’s 6th supplemental document protection in preparation for upcoming 30(b)(6) deposition of plaintiff.” Or, use assess on the tail end of a typical R/A entry: “Review and analysis of plaintiff’s 6th supplemental document production and assess impact on defense strategy and next steps in discovery.”
Assess, strategize, analyze, plan and prepare for x
A string of proposed. .
Chief
Don’t - bundle it with whatever the actual output was. No-one cares about your thinking per se.
I agree with not bundling the thinking with the outcome. I used to support an attorney who would legitimately bill .2 hours solely with an explanation that said “received email reaponse from client.” - Nothing. Else. - not READ email, not EVALUATE argument. Just purely receiving a message in his EMAIL inbox - with no back and forth interaction as part of the billable explanation.
analyze
Dwell on, as in dwelling on e-mail for 20 minutes before pressing send. 0.4
Additional self-scrutiny and second-guessing knowing that communication cannot be “unsent”
Dare you to use “Cogitate on”
Evaluate
Strategize
Analyze or strategize
Ruminate
Two verbs. Develop and identify. Evaluate and consider. Review and evaluate.
I would not ever use “consider.”
Case analysis and strategy re:
Attention to
As in house who reviews your bills, I ask you to cut down “attention to” entries and not bill me. This term is nonsense and doesn’t provide me any value
“Consider” sounds discount. I consider whether I want Taco Bell for dinner. You’re strategizing or drafting the output.
Ponder
FFS do not say ponder it’s not a soliloquy
Thunk on
Don't say "consider." More like "review correspondence and documents, analyze strategy and next steps re [x]."
Deigned to bother with
Many clients won't pay you to think, they pay you to act. Were you reviewing something in order to further determine your course of action? Strategize often gets written off, too...speaking as a long time legal biller dealing with many different types of clients. You need to actively doing something.
Agree with P2. In a small firm environment, if you actually enter in all your time… you basically either get chewed out by the partner or the client… there is zero realism about how long stuff actually takes
Attention to is my go-to as well. Helps if there's a specific issue or doc you were attentioning to!