My firm will start tracking the billing of associates as a group. My firm’s reasoning: ensure consistent monthly billing; and will provide new financial incentives to the group for meeting certain billing milestones. Has anyone worked at a firm that tracked associates hours as a whole group?

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I say always bill and overkill on billing and focus on all things billing no matter what. The moment you stop billing yeah problems. Keep billing

likefunny

I’m not sure why everyone is having a hard time understanding. This is basically the “group project” we all hated in school because we are all overachievers and there were undoubtedly some underachievers in our groups, but we were graded as a group so the overachievers end up either doing more work themselves or forcing the underachievers to actually work and do a good job. They think they’re working on “teamwork” but really it’s going to cause a lot of resentment and infighting. I hate the idea that your firm is doing that to you, OP. Managing associates is the job of partners, not other associates.

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The confusion stems from the way the the post is worded. It asks whether anyone has worked at a firm where they kept track of associates hours as a group. Pretty much all firms do this already. It wasn’t immediately clear to me that OP was saying that individuals would be potentially penalized if other associates don’t pull their weight. It would seem that a firm implementing this would also still look at individual billing. If that’s not the case, then I see the issue.

I’m not sure I understand. I’ve never worked anywhere that hasn’t tracked associates hours whether individually, by practice area, or as a whole. This is often done for budget purposes and determining compensation, in addition to measuring productivity.

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I’m still not clear on why or how this hasn’t always been done. How do they make a budget every year if they don’t already keep track of total associates hours? Associates are generally not bringing in business. They are profitable based on hours billed. The only way to create a budget would be to estimate what they will bill per year so you can account for any compensation increases, bonuses, overhead expenses, etc.

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Agree with A1. I think all firms do this. I’m surprised yours didn’t till now. How do they come up with productivity metrics by department etc without looking at the associates as a whole in addition to individually?

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C1 - agreed lol! I suppose we have to all coordinate time off from now on. Ok, sounds like my firm is blazing a new (and potentially misguided) path here. Thank you!

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OP, respectfully, I don’t understand the point of your post. Please try again.

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What do you mean by tracking billing as a group?

My firm will look at total amount of billable hours of all associates every month

Are you saying that they will no longer track each associate’s individual hours?

No, this is a new requirement in addition to individual yearly billing requirements.

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