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Most firms that I’m aware of will not penalize a junior at all for hours written off. This seems unfair
Yea as a Junior that’s not something you can control. If your firm is giving bonuses by realized hours not billed hours that’s a red flag that would absolutely make me leave.
This is a big red flag and I suggest you consider jumping ship.
The firm should focus on helping you realize more of your time, not just ask you to bill more. This is a poorly run business.
It’s completely normal for a 1st year associate’s hours to get written off (because 1st years are typically very inefficient and clients don’t want to pay for all that training time), but in my experience it’s very unusual for the partners to complain to the associate about it, or even let them know it’s happening for that matter. It should be generally understood and accepted that first years have a much lower realization rate. You shouldn’t be penalized for it.
You had decent bosses
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Sounds like ID 🤢
It is a red flag - particularly if they didn’t explain what billable entries they cut. Junior associates are inefficient and we often write off a portion of time billed before it gets sent to the client. Also, you should check your billable hours requirements and if your total hours billed all count or if it’s just realized hours. If it is the latter, do your best to find a better firm because your firm is asking you to work more hours for less pay so that the partners can make more money.
As a counter to the usual “red flag - time to leave” comments, you may want to probe why multiple partners are writing your time off. Increasing to 50 hours a week isn’t going to do anything if you aren’t being efficient with your time.
Efficiency isn’t necessarily your fault exclusively, it requires a conversation between you and the partner you are working with regarding scope, time expectations on certain tasks, check-ins when you’ve reached a certain number of hours on a given assignment, etc
I have a supervising attorney who tells me that the expectation for all assignments is "as soon as possible." When I asked for clarification, she told me anecdotes about she lost friends since she gave her life to her job.
I cannot seem to get a good gauge of the expectations. When I first began, I was told assignments should take about a week. Over the next two to three months, I was told me productivity was low because it was taking too long to submit assignments. It is getting frustrating.
Was in an environment like this as a junior and leaving was the best decision I ever made. Sure, my hours requirement looked better on paper, but I was told that I should be targeting 8 billable hours a day in order to get to my target of 1600 (while being paid less than others at bigger firms). Worked close to the same amount at a firm with 1850 billable requirement (completely time you entered as billable, before partner cuts) and ended up with a productivity bonus. If you bill an average of 40 hours a week, the managing partner should not be after you as a first year.
Red flag. Time to leave.
It is normal for partners to write off lots and lots of junior time - it shouldn’t reflect badly on you and that is part of why partners cut your time instead of theirs or senior assoc time. Any place that measures juniors based on realization vs hours billed is going to be toxic bc in that context partners are going to be screwing juniors systematically.
There’s a lot going on here. Firstly, having time written off is completely normal, and the more junior you are the more normal it is. However, it would be worth trying to understand for your own development why the time is being written off - is it something you can fix by just improving your time narration, for example? I would suggest talking to a mid level you get along with in the first instance, and from there maybe an SA (you can also ask to see copies of bills so you can get a feel for what makes it past the write off screen).
Secondly however, there are certain practice areas where your time is always going to be sliced and diced (ahem, insurance defence) and there are also certain clients who just don’t want to see junior time on bills. You can’t control this. At your level, you also can’t control the scope and fee estimates on matters and you have very little control over the tasks you’re assigned. If your firm is one in which you’re measured on hours realised rather than hours billed then this should be a red flag for you. I have previously worked in similar environments (we were measured on hours billed but we would get heavily pressured to self-censor time before it even made it into the system, to an alarming degree) and it’s toxic. If implementing some fixes on your end (eg, improved narrations) isn’t helping and you really are being judged on realised hours, I would suggest looking elsewhere.
Find a better ID firm then... pressure to cut or self-censor doesn’t exist everywhere. We encourage the opposite actually - never ever self-cut something that is billable. If there’s an issue with time/cuts that starts to be a trend, your seniors should let you know and work with you on how to fix it, either in workflow or in how you capture/describe it.
Huge red flag if their solution is telling you to bill 50 hours a week (seriously wtf) rather than providing additional training on how to capture more of your time and providing exemplar billings
Red flag. My last firm was like this and I left when I found out they were like what you’re describing. They’ve gone through more associates than I can count since I’ve left. Is this ID? 🙈
Get. Out. Now.
How long have you been practicing? I’m a junior too (3weeks)
Sworn in May 2021.
An aside, assuming the work is there you should really be billing more than 40 hours per week if you are serious about progression at the firm. Just a Biglaw reality. Your first year at the firm is not the time to establish that you are a person who does the minimum.
That’s totally unreasonable for a first-year associate.
Bonuses in my (UK National) firm are based on recovered time billed. I think it’s something like 90% realisation of target hours to get your bonus.
I’ve heard of several juniors being screwed over by partners underquoting on deals and then significant chunks of juniors’ time then being written off so they don’t get their bonus.
I was not aware that was the deal when I joined!
Has anyone else come across this in the UK?