I’m pretty sure colleagues at my firm are inflating their billable hours. Is this the norm? I suspect many of you will think this is obvious and/or that I’m naive but wtf? I find hitting 2200 is tough even with a good sized work load. Am I just expected to play the game? I don’t want to sound self-righteous but if most are lying just to make the requirement, then maybe the requirement should be lower.

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I’m positive my coworkers over bill. I am busier than them and finish every month 20-40 hours below them. Every. Single. Month.

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A2 - at my firm you see everyone, partners included. There’s no reason to compete for associates since bonuses are lockstep and stop at 2200. It’s a useful tool for me to see which associates are busy and decide who to delegate work for. You can get a “discretionary bonus” if you bill more than 2200 but good lock with getting one of those.

Working collected is where you compete because that shows your actual value. How many dollars did your work bring in vs someone else’s. If you do 2400 hours of insured work and I do 2000 of mine, i’m gonna make the firm more money if our rates are the same, so you should be paying me more.

Maybe we should find a better way than the billable hour

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I still think we need to track our time so we ensure we’re complying with the flat rates so we can adjust if necessary but billing by the .1 is the biggest waste of time

Wow is 2200 actually your min. billable target? That is insane.

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Inflation could be part of it, but a nicer, more helpful way of reiterating A5’s point would be to suggest that you take this opportunity to look at your billables and see if there are legitimate periods of time you should bill for that you haven’t? I won’t reiterate the many ways this can happen, there are plenty of threads on that subject. But make sure you aren’t writing off your own time!!

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This, but also that op’s colleagues may be drowning in work (busier than op), and when that is the case 2200 hours doesn’t seem crazy

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Sure. Cut your salary respectively too.

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🙄

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Maybe you aren’t as busy as you think you are

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Obviously this sort of comment was inevitable here. I’m sure plenty of people are busier than I am. Regardless, I see how much other people are in the office and if I compare that to time billed, it of course makes me wonder. Could they be working from home too? Sure but I doubt it.

Yeah OP a good measure of this is to check how many hours you worked for the day, and if overall you didn’t bill 90% of that time, you’re under billing because you are being too cautious about your time. Some people are so weird about this, concerned that every second not spent drafting a doc is questionable to bill - it’s not. Bill your time, thinking, emails, drafting, reading, eveeerrryyything other than literally not working at all, where you are 100% done checked out.

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2200 hours isn’t hard to hit (assuming you have a constant inflow of work)

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It’s doable but it does consume the entire day M-F. Not saying that’s the worst work schedule scenario. Just saying it is tough.

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