How much do you embellish your billable hours? I'm in my first year and I'm really no where near meeting my goal. I know it's unethical but I'm getting nervous about not hitting the right marks.

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One of the reasons why you are billed at a lower hourly rate than partners is to make up for the extra time that you will have to put in properly complete the project at hand. If a contract is taking you 1 hour at this moment, take 2 hours. Dont lie and put an extra hour down, but actually take an extra hour to re-read it, proofread, and fix mistakes. A lot of newer attorneys think you need to get everything done as fast as possible but in reality you need to do everything as correctly as possible. No one will remember if it took you 1 or 6 hours Theyll just remember the work product. Take your time, bill accordingly, and make sure the reputation you build is that you do things properly rather than quickly

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Also in-house here and completely agree with this advice. Take the time to be thorough and it will save your partners and your clients time and money. It will build trust and you'll be given more work. The flip side of rushing is that when a client finds enough errors coming from an associate, they will eventually ask for a new associate and that can be a difficult challenge to navigate.

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Others have said it but let me say it again for emphasis. Work slower.

(And as an aside, if you’re in the office for 14 hours you should have 11-12 billable hours on the clock. At your level don’t stay late for non-billable work without a very good reason. Otherwise you’ll crack up.)

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Clients used to pay an uplift for the high pressure stuff. We still have it in our LoE template. But never charge it anymore because not market.

If clients want to pay for what it *should* cost, I’m happy to price on a fixed fee basis (and often do). But otherwise I want my staff to work carefully and let it take as long as it takes. Rushed work product is bad work product. I will very happily have that conversation with a client if they are pissed off about the figure.

Then again sometimes a junior will bill 8 hours to review a three page contract and in those cases it’s a write-down and a conversation about time management.

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Don't embellish but also don't fret about hitting hours. Everyone knows first years have a ramp up period. Work on building relationships and making a good first impression so that as a second year you'll have a consistent flow of work.

Probably all moot. Associate model is dead. Partners managing ai wishing 3 years. Sorry.

Nice try, ethics investigator!

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