I hate billing. I love working defense, but just cannot stand billing. I am thinking of switching sides and working for a plaintiff’s firm. What are the positives and negatives of working on the plaintiff’s side. Also, I’m 2 years into practicing, if that makes a difference for any of the cons.

The billing gets easier. There’s an Art to it and it’s very tedious and nobody is really teaching young associates how to do it. Ask a more experienced lawyer, preferably a senior or a partner who does the prebill or deals with non paying clients to look at your time sheets and I guarantee they will give you some helpful suggestions and ways to save time. I’m still fine tuning how I bill after many years.

My problem isn’t so much the actual act of billing. You’re effectively tied to the billable hour. Slow Friday and you decide to check out early? What happens to those 4 hours? Decide to go on a vacation? Great - how are you going to make up those 2 weeks? That’s what I hate about billing.

Actual dealing with my time isn’t so bad. I dictate it into my phone and send it to my admin and she does it and then I edit by hand. It’s not that bad.

I’m also 2 years in. I switched VERY quickly and I am never, ever going back. Positives include: NO BILLING. Negatives: I’ll let you know when I find any.

Plaintiff’s side has better pay, more grateful clients, less hours, and no billing. Cons? You don’t get to be a cog in a machine for a multi billion dollar insurance company, if that’s your thing.

You also should be careful of which plaintiff firm you choose if you definitely want to switch. I am not saying all big defense firms are the greatest things out there. And I’m not saying the big corporations they rep are without sin (some of them are indeed awful). Plenty of issues there, and the worst boss I ever had was a defense attorney...but based on real world experience, I can tell you some (not all, but some) of the really successful plaintiffs lawyers are ruthless, egomaniacal sociopaths who are not bound by facts or any actual ethical or moral code. And they have chewed up and spit out dozen of associates throughout there careers and screwed countless associates and referral lawyers out of money. There’s a reason why some of these folks have completely absurd and stupid amounts of money. Most of them (but not all) did not get there by being nice, mentoring, sharing, telling the truth, or playing by the rules. They are as cunning and deceitful as the worst in humanity. Don’t worry about trying to find the biggest sharks in the ocean to work with and the highest salary. Try to just find a good plaintiff firm where you mesh well. A place where they will actually teach you things and help you develop business and sign up some cases on your own, and give you a nice little taste of the cases you work up on your own, and not expect you to work up only their cases like a possessed lunatic 7 days per week, 15 hours per day.

And be very wary of the “no billables and less work” talk. If you think defense lawyers work hard, wait till you see how intense some plaintiffs firms are.

So many more practical experience opportunities in defense.

I work insurance defense and in the last two plus years I’ve sat first chair on 4 trials, 2 arbitrations, taken and defended countless party depos and have been lead on private mediations and MSCs.

I work directly with claims reps and clients. I have my own caseload and I also support my boss.

I may be a unicorn but I’m not alone here in SoCal.

Billing is 2100 per year and I make great bonuses and salary. Class of 2015

The billing gets easier but it does NOT get LESS TEDIOUS. That is the point. In fact the tedium gets worse once you have to review others' billing.

But that is not a reason to switch sides. If you switch sides for that reason alone you will fail.

You love defense, so stick to it and find ways to overcome the tedium.

I started my career doing defense work. I honestly liked how flexible most defense firms were because you could just leave anytime and do work anywhere, so long as you kept up with your billing/work. But I got bored of just doing doc review just to do doc review or relying on the partners to give work. I am doing Plaintiff work now which I like because I’m helping people/practice area. I do make more as a Plaintiff because I get a base plus bonuses. Defense firms are generally capped unless you’re equity. Defense makes it up in other ways like health insurance and 401K. Plaintiff you generally are in your own minus some basic health insurance).

Plaintiff side and billing

I still bill because the type of cases I handle are subject to attorney’s fees.

Effort
I found that plaintiff work is much much much more difficult than defense work and requires a lot more work. The Plaintiff bears the burden of proof. Accordingly, you must be well versed in the law - substantive and procedurally. You must know the facts of your case: good, bad, ugly and of course consider how the other side will destroy your case.

I would agree that some plaintiff’s firms are more vicious than others especially the smaller ones. Don’t work out at a firm where the partners leave too early or expect you to handle everything without help because they’re too fucked up in their own personal lives, that’s not how it works.  Those firms, will throw you under the bus at their earliest opportunity especially if they improperly value a case. Find a good one with a mentor/partner that will help you.

Join us.

4th year here following 👀

I started plaintiff side:

No billing is a definite plus (my SO is biglaw so I'm using her experience as a comparison point.)

I am going to push back on the experience point slightly. General biglaw litigation definitely provides a better breadth of experience but I think depth of experience has been much higher plaintiff side (substantive drafting experience, second chairing depos, running meet and confers, just generally being looped in more to the litigation process as a junior) and it continues at that pace (most midlevels will first chair a depo and fully own smaller substantive filings with minimal partner oversight if you show you can handle it)

I think this is partially a result of size, but also if you're not billing there is no benefit to having juniors do any work that can be handled by support staff or producing work product that won't be immediately helpful.

Cons: lower pay (for the most part); lack of name brand recognition compared to big law shops, and you might end up pigeon holed. If I want to move on in a few years I really don't know what my options would be.

Billing is kind of a motivator to me. Maybe try to look at it that way? Of course, now I'm an independent contractor, so billing is VERY motivating...my paycheck depends on it. 😊

Go for it! But every defense attorney hates billing. Have you done appeals for deductions? Awful. But be wary of the disqualification factor when deciding which plaintiff firm to submit a resume.

Do plaintiffs law firms really not bill? When I clerked, we saw tons of plaintiff’s motions for attorneys fees where I saw time sheets. Are those BS?

What practice area? What firm size? Location?