If you don’t have 8 hours of billable time a day, do you leave as is or do you fill in the gap with non-billable work? While I am in the office, I don’t always get the billable amount since I don’t have enough work. Seems like a waste of time to enter non-billable time just to fill in the gap but I also don’t want them to think I am not there and slacking off.

What’s the norm?

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Leave as is.

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It appears other firms actually have and follow rules. Sounds like hell but ymmv

Depends on the firm. Some require you to enter 8 hours for each workday (both of mine have/had that policy). You just use a non-billable number to make up the difference.

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At a firm where you had to input 8 hours and if you didn’t your bonus would get docked

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We always had to have 8 hrs. So I’d fill in the gap with “admin time”

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We require 7. I do it to follow the rules and also to keep track of things like mentoring, time spent on the summer associate program, training, pitches, writing articles, etc. If you have a slow month or year and have non billable productive time (like the above) you can go back and note you spent X hours on certain work (especially pitches or article writing or other biz dev) and it may not get you to bonus eligibility if that’s a thing but it shows you’re a good “firm citizen”. That kind of thing matters at some firms at least on the margins.

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Them the brakes

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Find the relevant admin numbers that you spend the rest of your time with (most firms have a myriad of these numbers for tracking): client development, professional development, training (internal/external), invoicing, office/firm events, matter administration (opening, invoicing, conflicts), reviews/ evaluations, pro bono, etc.

I guess that you are a junior so any time not charged is well spent on professional development (depends on the practice area but it is never lost time to re-read sent out and corrected work and try to understand context, read the law or articles or try to understand the business of your clients) or pro bono (particularly if you are a litigator because you might get to do more).

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Thanks everyone!

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