I work at a firm with 1650 billables. The partner said we should aim to bill 35-40 hours a week to account for periods when it is slow.

Just curious, for firms with 1800 billables… how much do you realistically aim to bill a week to hit your annual target?

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I target 35-40 a week at a 1,950 target firm. Some weeks are 40-50, others 30-35. Somewhat out of your control. I don’t work Sundays either.

It helps when some vacation time counts toward the bonus target. My old firm didn’t do that, but my new firm does and it’s great.

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These numbers are crazy too me. I own a family law firm and the minimums are 1000 on billed to invoice and collected. We have a nice bonus structure for all collected billables over 1000.

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Billable hours are the worst 🙃 Why did our profession decide that measuring our lives in 0.1 increments was a good idea?!

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I used to target 45 hours at a 1,950 hour requirement. At 50 weeks that was 2,250 annualized, which is pretty close to where I was billing as an associate (1,950 target notwithstanding).

Now that I’m at an 1,800 hour shop I tell my mentees to target 38/week. At 50 weeks that gets you to 1,900, and gives a little wiggle room for vacations and slower weeks.

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I target billing as much as I can. My firm’s work flow is so inconsistent that I’ve been billing 45-50 hours a week for the last 6 weeks and still haven’t made up for how slow Q1 was. Minimum of 1850.

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Some areas are notoriously bad-like M&A. Either crazy busy or crazy anxious

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As a quick rule of thumb I do target divided by 48

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Thank you, this is helpful. Currently hoping to switch firms and that sounds doable. That’s awesome that your firm counts some vacation.

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At 1800, with 3 weeks’ vacation and 3 weeks’ holiday/sick/PTO, that’s an average of 40. But with all the non-billable stuff we do, in my experience that’s an average of between 45-50 per week WORKING hours. And that’s an average; front-load as early in the year as possible so you aren’t panicking at the end or slow p periods catch you by surprise.

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Thanks all, this has been very helpful.

4th year $140k M&A

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