Is it strange that anyone at my firm (associates/partners) can look up where any lawyer is on billable time for the month? I’m a third year lateral, and my old firm didn’t do that. Is that normal? Feels invasive

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That's weird.

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My old firm did that, and I hated it. Seemed almost like an invasion of privacy and there was a partner who would just go around to people's offices and tell them to work more (even if the firm didn't have more work to give us). It also encouraged associates to be in a daily competition with each other and made people salty seeing how little the partners were billing (in some cases). At my current firm, the partners get our numbers at the end of the month but are generally chill about it.

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Culture is always the difference between transparency and oppressive scrutiny. With a good culture it's nice to have info that no one really dwells on. Bad culture and its a source of conflict.

smart

The big law panopticon.

likefunny

My prior firms were like that. Scary but also let's you see if you're behind or doing well. Can also get good ideas for billing narratives

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My old firm did this! I personally really liked it because I could make sure my hours were generally around the same as everyone else’s hours. It made me less paranoid.

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Both biglaw firms I worked in you could do this in the timekeeping software, but I’m pretty sure only the asshats actually looked in on peoples’ hours for anything other than a legitimate business reason. For example, I had some clients that wanted to keep close track of the hours spent on various projects so they could keep their management apprised of the coming bills and I’d pull hours numbers for that and limit to the client/matter. It was easier for me to just pull (or have my assistant pull) than ask everyone to send me their own numbers.

What was worse was the monthly hours reports that used to get sent around, it listed everyone’s hours that month, the year, and whether they were over/under target.

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We're like that. Love it. Good to know how busy a group is so you can calibrate how busy you want to be. Also helps figure out which juniors are maybe slipping through the cracks, could use a little extra attention etc.

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That’s how my firm is, but we are generally quite transparent.

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I’ve heard this. The big firms I worked for only partners could pull up billing reports for associate hours and projected Yearly totals. Associates could not. I don’t care what other people are billing, tbh. If you have lock step bonuses, who cares? If partners are that jerky to tell you to bill more … even without work available to you … I’d legit ignore it or leave.

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We can’t- or atleast I haven’t figured it out

My firm shows this information to partners but not other associates.

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