So my last two companies did not have billable hours for the paralegals. I am interviewing now and of course most places do have billables for paralegals. What are your average doable billable hours?

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I’m at 1400 and it’s very doable as long as there is consistent billable work. In order to account for holidays, vacation days and a few sick days a year I would try to aim for about 6.5 a day.

Also, if your attorneys are consistently assigning you non-billable work that’s preventing you from meeting your billable hours requirement, raise it with management. Or if it’s a consistent recurring project, see if you can get management to consider those hours as going towards your requirement. And finally, if you end up with significant lulls in billable work see if there are any nonbillable projects that need to get done and include that work as an example of being a team player, going above and beyond, etc. during review time.

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1600, which is tough because I’m also a manager 😫. I didn’t have billables in any of my old jobs, however.

Questions are always welcome. What’s dumb is doing something wrong in the first place and wasting time because you didn’t take the time to think critically and wonder what questions might be relevant (and if you’re in a workplace where you don’t feel comfortable doing so, that’s not helpful for your career development). Billables refer to time you can bill to the client - things that require your expertise as a paralegal. Drafting RFPs would be billable, but cleaning up your office is not. Of course this all depends on the client/firm as everyone has different rules and definitions. I use timers and spreadsheets to keep track of my time to the tenth of an hour.

And your point is correct. There is efficiency to consider - very unlikely that you’ll reach 1600 in a 40 hr work week. I have to do a lot of administrative/management stuff that I can’t bill. So a 50+ work week would translate to me meeting my billables.

1550 at my last firm and 1650 in my current. No problem meeting either and I rarely work overtime. I always aim for 7 billable hours a day.

So this firm is saying 120 hours a month. Which is 1440 a year. A couple have told me that’s too high. Thoughts?

That’s very doable, easy I would even say.

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120 is about 6 hours a day, that is what my requirements are. I can get 6 to 7 a day when I have a lot of tasks to do. l rarely work overtime unless I have a deadline that needs to be met or a trial coming up. 6 is pretty standard and it leave 2hrs of admin time.

I have 1,725 requirement but already billed 2,100 by end of July (fiscal year is 10/1 to 9/30).

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