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About how many deals do y’all work on in a year?
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Nobody has ever spoken to this clearly over my whole career, other than to say you should just record it all as you go and bill it. That is pretty easy for some who just work on one thing all day. My practice, in contrast, involves dealing with multiple, overlapping things all day, and it is a huge pain in the ass. Not unusual to have 20 different things or more I record to each day, in addition to all kinds of nonbillable things. For example, I will be trying to edit a document and will have someone “drop by,” will have multiple emails coming in all the tome I have to dispose of, will get calls (random and scheduled), etc. I have to try to track it all day.
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In related news, the sky is blue and the earth is round (disputed).
When you find out that everyone has liquor in their drawers (shock!) and your colleagues are hooking up at 3PM (the horror!!!!!) you'll freak out
That is because in many instances there is a gulf between what the firm wants and what the firm feels like it can say. More billable time is always good, what matters more is how you present it to the client than any specific rule of thumb.
A4, I’m with you here. I just find it funny how anytime someone mentions value billing on one of these threads, the responses basically accuse the author of any ethical violation on par with witness tampering
Yes!!!!!! It’s all fake!!!! How can every 6 min reflect equal focus, value, work product???????
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A1, billable hour was not always there. Firms used to send a bill that wasn’t related to time but value. I am a boomer and this was before my time; the senior partners when I was a junior talked about it. I don’t know why the transition happened. Of course that was also a time when lawyers were very comfortable but not rich. your frustration with billing is directly related to the comp we all get.
The billable hour came into vogue based on an antitrust case in the legal profession when “everyone” started billing the same “value” for the same “product” like a fixed fee Will. Billable hours as a method of billing was thought a way around that but has had its own unintended consequences as “hours” became the raw standard for evaluating lawyer performance instead of “value” and the bean counters started to analyze them. Billing attorneys have always “adjusted” hours/bills for clients (like failing to send invoices or writing invoices up/down and setting rates based on experience and skill and offering discounts or negotiating for premiums) so “value” billing is is some contexts “more honest” in its approach. Many clients used to keep their “regular” firms on retainers. We do a combo of fixed fee, retainer or “value” depending on the context. We also do good work. Electronic billing, designed to wring out the gamesmanship of the billable hour (and $20 danish), is for the birds.
It often varies from client to client
(Although, someone once told me it doesn’t matter. Clients are paying your rate so that when everything is a fire drill you’re able to handle in the best/ fastest way possible- they’re paying you for 3am not 9-5)
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The billable hour has been there since the dawn of time and it will still be there long after we're gone. We're not reinventing the system