How many hours do you bill a year? Most of my team seems to break 2200, but I can’t even manage to break 2000 for a few years now even though I’m constantly working.

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1650 but I’m in Canada where they let lawyers have lives 🤷🏻‍♀️

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I want to go to there.

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As close as I can to 1900, which is our requirement. I was at 1902 last year.

If I really limited nonbillable work and had a lot of “bill and chill” hours like diligence, doc review, or long meetings, I can see getting to 2000 without too much pain. Beyond that sounds terrible, especially if the work is actually mentally challenging.

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For junior folks who have chatty clients/partners, don’t forget to bill matter-related e-mails. I didn’t as a junior and lost out on easy hours that way. Now I go through my inbox at the end of each day and add on 0.1-0.3 per email(s) in the same six minutes depending on the length of response required. Also, add any client/partner calls that go to your cell while you’re running errands. This usually adds up to another 1-2.5 hrs a day. You only need 6-7 more to be at 8-9 hrs each day. Add in the client calls during work hours (another 1-3 hrs depending on mood of client) and any revisions/briefs/reg filings you’re doing at the moment, factor in the busy days, and you’re basically free to vacation during the holidays at 2100 before christmas.

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I think I’ve averaged around 1800, which is our requirement. It’s been very feast or famine - usually a few months in a row at 250-300 and then only ~100, usually because of some bad luck like a deal dying.

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About 2100 on average, but it seems our east coast colleagues are slightly higher.

1,900

As long as you meet the minimum, does it really matter? 1950-2000 is reasonable/expected at my firm

I was pacing 2300 before April but planned to slow down some in the second half (our fy ends in October). COVID took care of that for me, so now I'm worried about getting to 1800.

Are you being ruthless about recording your time? If not, you need to evaluate where your leakage stems from.

I have 0 desire to be partner. I guess I’m just paranoid of being seen as lazy compared to my peers and layoffs with the economic collapse.

This is me. Feel reasonably busy, but no where near on pace for 2k+.

I know that some may call this unsavory but I really take advantage of task billing. I bill for every email to every different person on every different matter.

Also if I’m writing a brief, I’m breaking every part of it down. I bill for outlining, writing the intro, research, editing the argument, etc.

I never bill anything into more than 2 hour increments, I can usually break the entry down further.

That means I round up a lot and get maybe an hour or a half hour on the round up. But it’s also what the client wants so I make them pay for it.

They want to know everything I’m doing in great detail broken down by tasks. So, I give that to them.

I feel like I get less time written off because the easy targets are big chunks of time on the bill. And I get to Bill a bit more time.

I think it’s just a matter of client preference. A6 is right in the sense that some clients try to cut down any block bigger than 3-4 hours. At the same time, some clients are anti-rounding and want block bills for entire tasks. I will say that for MTDs, I block bill by drafts rather than segments and explain in the description what changed between drafts. But this is also because when I was a junior, I watched a teammate get pulled off a case for taking 6 hrs drafting the intro. It wasn’t fair to him, given an effective intro needs to take into account the rest of the brief, but neither the client nor the partner cared.

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Opinions welcomed:

V5 Legal Assistant here (2 years in industry, started at current firm in late April). I’m on pace for 2700 billable hours / year. To boot, that rate is going up because of all of the 65+ hour weeks lately, and the first month being billed around 40.

I was just told that I may not qualify for any bonuses because I haven’t been here for 1 year.

Is this normal? Am I crazy for thinking that I should be getting a *significant* bonus for all of the crazy hours and deadlines?

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Some of you really only bill 17/1800 hours? Are you just busy doing non-billable work or you just don’t have enough work coming to you? If it’s because you don’t have enough work does that mean you have your evenings and weekends to yourself too? Could you maybe help the rest of us out who never get either?

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Mid-level here. Has anyone gotten their firm to approve their doing work at a deep discount and, if so, what strategies did you use? A potential client approached me directly about a small matter (~20 to 30 hr amicus brief). The potential client (gov’t) pays a standard rate ~40% lower than mine, but I want to take on the project because it would be a good professional opportunity (e.g., high profile case & client) and of course the lower rate won’t affect my comp directly. 🤷‍♀️ All advice welcome!

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