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It would be hard going from not billing to billing 1500 hrs/year overnight. I would ask for clarification if it’s truly a weekly requirement or an annual. All areas of law have peaks and valleys in terms of work/caseload. I think 30 hrs a week is doable, but it will be much more challenging if you work in transactional law. I work in IP prosecution and I average 6-6.5 hr days all at .1 - .3 increments.
As mentioned by others, make sure you are capturing all of your activities. Use timers if your billing software has that option, and enter your time after each task until it all becomes second nature.
Lastly, usually all firms have a non-billable admin code - if yours doesn’t, ask for one. I think it’s important to capture ALL of your time, not just billable. This will also help you explain any hourly shortages for the week.
Billing is really hard. You have to breakdown communications, organization of documents, reading depos, summaries of depositions (time for reading and then time for summary) you have to use universal billing codes.
You can bill for everything if you’re creative enough. If you’ve never billed before, I suggest getting a manual with examples of different entries. I went from defense to plaintiff work fifteen years ago. Then I returned to defense earlier this year and let me tell you, getting used to billing again was a challenge. I bought a download from Perfectly Paralegal that was a great starting point to get me used to it again. Seven months in and I now have a twenty page Word document that I created with hundreds of billing entries that I use everyday. It makes it so easy to cut and paste my description and then add in the names, case info, etc.
Good tip - I'm going to check out that website - thanks!
Odd. I agree with SP1 that it’s typically yearly not weekly and that can be hard with peaks and valleys of the workload.
I’m inclined to think that this actually a way to for him/her to figure out the budget for next year, as most positions are budgeted through hours billed. Although that being said, they should be able to run a report on all paralegals on time-keeping software to figure that out. Another reason could be there are new matters and trying to figure out who has the bandwidth for it.
If it were me, I would ask for specifics on the reason for the change. In the meantime, start asking for more work from your attorneys via email and if they say nothing then you will have a paper trail for your boss as your explanation.
The 30 hours a week is what you would need to bill to hit your yearly goal. Those 30 hours factor in holidays and vacation time. The goal we try to hit daily is 6 hours. If you are hitting that goal, then there will be excess to cover holidays/vacations. As mentioned in other comments, this will not always be easy, especially at first. It takes time to get into the habit and flow of tracking your time. I use timers, which can be overwhelming when you need to go back and forth between projects all day, and rack up a long list of timers waiting to be completed and entered. Something that I find useful is that, when I start a timer, I will jot a note in the description field of what the project is or everything I anticipate I will need to do for that matter that day, so when I go back to in to actually submit the time, I have a reminder of what the entry will be. When I touch a million files a day, I develop short-term memory loss!
You may want to ask your attorney to give you some guidance on what he is expecting. He should be able to provide you with examples. I was never given any guidance so I had to piece things together by asking other paralegals and attorneys how things should be worded – especially if you will be billing for insurance clients. Good luck, you’ll be fine!