Easier to bill more in lit than in transactional? Or bout the same?

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Transactional, 100%

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Transactional practice will keep you busy all day with calls, emails, drafting, etc., but it’s constant task switching and often very hard to capture your time accurately if you don’t enter it instantly. It’s very easy to unintentionally write down your own time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve waited a day or two (let’s be honest - a week or two) to enter my time and sat there saying to myself, “wtf did you do, bro? I know I was busy all day… but what happened?”

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I can certainly bill very long blocks to research and writing, which I think reduces task-switching inefficiency and makes the actual act of billing marginally less painful on those days. I spent a whopping 13 hours on a single thing today (well, yesterday and today now 😫) which is obviously awesome for my billables. That long of a block is not common but decent chunks of time can be.

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I definitely agree with that too and have had the same experience.

Depends on what kind of lit practice.

In complex or high value ie “bet the company” litigation then billing is easier if you have the workstream as you can bill and the client will pay.

In high volume low margin litigation you tend to have huge fee pressure and a lot of nonbillable file admin to do. Conflict checks, engagement letters, dealing with money transfers - they take roughly the same amount of time regardless of whether you have a 20k or 2m claim.

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Easiest to bill with big clients and big matters, who basically don’t care what the bill is, whether transactional or lit. Block billing is amazing.

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For big law, lit 100%

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I’ve done both and found that the same hours in lit tires me much more.

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Honestly easier in my experience

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