Billing efficiency Forum

[Anonymous User]

I was talking to a colleague today about hours and found out that they somehow bill around 8 hours a day and don’t have to work at home (comes in around 8 and leaves around 5:30). She said that she isn’t in a group with a lot of fire drills, but a lot of work, so it’s easy to bill the entire day.

Are people really this efficient? I feel like it takes me 10-11 hours to get anywhere near 8 billables and I feel like I always have work too.

She’s a senior associate. I’m a jr/mid.

[QContinuum]

What kills efficiency is when you have periods of sitting around and waiting between projects/meetings, or have firm events to attend. But if you're writing a brief, and you're sitting at your desk working on that brief all day, it's pretty easy to have very high billing efficiency. Getting 8 billables out of 9.5 hours worked is entirely achievable. OTOH, fire drills don't always lend themselves to high billing efficiency because there's often a lot of sitting and waiting for other team members to get back to you.

I guess to some extent it also depends on an ability to ruthlessly focus on billable work. It's remarkably easy to waste hours every day between email and reading Law360 and chatting with friends before/after meetings - all things that vaguely feel like part of "working" but aren't billable.

[barkschool]

Depends a lot on your work environment. I’m in a relatively quiet office, so it isn’t hard to sit down and bill work through till I eat lunch, then reset and do it again till I feel it’s time to leave.

A lot of things can mess that rhythm up, but I’ll keep a rather ridged 9-630/7 for a few weeks at a time if I can help it.

[Anonymous User]

People also pad their hours. A LOT. I've talked to numerous colleagues that do this, in a variety of ways.

To each their own but it sounds like it's a relatively common practice.

[misterjames]

When there's billable work to be done then sure, 8 hours worked can be 8 hours billed. Really depends what you're doing with that time. As anyone could imagine, 8 straight hours of concentration is mentally exhausting. Doing that every day consistently would lead to burnout for most. I think that's why for most people it's either an 8 hour day and like 5-6 hours billed, or 10-12 hour days 8 hours billed, etc etc. I personally couldn't imagine billing 8 hours straight every day without at least a couple breaks here and there, my work product would surely suffer.

[Anonymous User]

People also pad their hours. A LOT. I've talked to numerous colleagues that do this, in a variety of ways.

To each their own but it sounds like it's a relatively common practice.

Can you elaborate? I'm a junior, so fairly new to all of this, but that seems fraudulent. Is it the norm?

[Anonymous User]

People also pad their hours. A LOT. I've talked to numerous colleagues that do this, in a variety of ways.

To each their own but it sounds like it's a relatively common practice.

Can you elaborate? I'm a junior, so fairly new to all of this, but that seems fraudulent. Is it the norm?

Just started at my firm three months ago. Been shocked by how many people are doing this and the extent to which they're doing it.

[Anonymous User]

People also pad their hours. A LOT. I've talked to numerous colleagues that do this, in a variety of ways.

To each their own but it sounds like it's a relatively common practice.

Can you elaborate? I'm a junior, so fairly new to all of this, but that seems fraudulent. Is it the norm?

Just started at my firm three months ago. Been shocked by how many people are doing this and the extent to which they're doing it.

In order of least bad to actual fraud, this is what I've seen:

People routinely shift around their hours, i.e., they work all day on Sunday but then have nothing to do on Monday. Since you have to report Monday's hours, regardless of what you've done, people will shift their hours to Monday. I get this one.

Other people will round up to the quarter hour every time. I also kind of get this one.

Others don't keep formal track of their hours and guesstimate. Obviously they could be off by significant time doing this.

Finally, a few people have told me they routinely add an hour or two on a daily or weekly basis, depending on what they can get away with.

Not sure why people are so open about it, and I'm in a smaller biglaw office.

[Anonymous User]

People also pad their hours. A LOT. I've talked to numerous colleagues that do this, in a variety of ways.

To each their own but it sounds like it's a relatively common practice.

Can you elaborate? I'm a junior, so fairly new to all of this, but that seems fraudulent. Is it the norm?

Just started at my firm three months ago. Been shocked by how many people are doing this and the extent to which they're doing it.

In order of least bad to actual fraud, this is what I've seen:

People routinely shift around their hours, i.e., they work all day on Sunday but then have nothing to do on Monday. Since you have to report Monday's hours, regardless of what you've done, people will shift their hours to Monday. I get this one.

Other people will round up to the quarter hour every time. I also kind of get this one.

Others don't keep formal track of their hours and guesstimate. Obviously they could be off by significant time doing this.

Finally, a few people have told me they routinely add an hour or two on a daily or weekly basis, depending on what they can get away with.

Not sure why people are so open about it, and I'm in a smaller biglaw office.

The one I’m most familiar with is when people stack tenths of an hour for one client on top of each other.

For example, they work on something for 13 min (.3), then go back to it later and spend another 13 min (.3). Technically, should be .5 (26 min). It adds up throughout the week.

[Anonymous User]

People also pad their hours. A LOT. I've talked to numerous colleagues that do this, in a variety of ways.

To each their own but it sounds like it's a relatively common practice.

Can you elaborate? I'm a junior, so fairly new to all of this, but that seems fraudulent. Is it the norm?

Just started at my firm three months ago. Been shocked by how many people are doing this and the extent to which they're doing it.

In order of least bad to actual fraud, this is what I've seen:

People routinely shift around their hours, i.e., they work all day on Sunday but then have nothing to do on Monday. Since you have to report Monday's hours, regardless of what you've done, people will shift their hours to Monday. I get this one.

Why would you do this? Who cares when your hours are billed? Literally no one checks the daily distribution of your hours, except maybe your secretary.

Other people will round up to the quarter hour every time. I also kind of get this one.

That’s crazy if you’re billing by .1 as assumed.

Others don't keep formal track of their hours and guesstimate. Obviously they could be off by significant time doing this.

This happens all the time, though I think the evidence is that most people significantly underestimate their time doing it this way (my firm is always trying to get us to use timers because people bill more that way).

Finally, a few people have told me they routinely add an hour or two on a daily or weekly basis, depending on what they can get away with.

That’s nuts. I’ve never heard someone admit to that.

One thing you will see is variations in how tightly people monitor their timers (ie do they turn them off when they head to the bathroom or when they’re checking Facebook for a minute or two). I personally think that’s fair as there’s always several .1s of reading emails at random times that never get billed to make up for it.

[politibro44]

Relatedly, I’m interested in hearing of billing practices that involve the opposite. Does anyone cut time as a junior for fear of billing too much and then having partners not give you work? It seems some partners have billing sensitive clients or alternative fee arrangements that are not that reasonable give the rates the firm charges.

And yes, I am aware you should never cut your own time, but have also heard of people doing it. For context, think Am Law 51-100 firm.

[Anonymous User]

Relatedly, I’m interested in hearing of billing practices that involve the opposite. Does anyone cut time as a junior for fear of billing too much and then having partners not give you work? It seems some partners have billing sensitive clients or alternative fee arrangements that are not that reasonable give the rates the firm charges.

And yes, I am aware you should never cut your own time, but have also heard of people doing it. For context, think Am Law 51-100 firm.

Yes, I self-police my hours. I probably worked 300 hours that I didn’t bill this year (I usually put it under pending to keep track).

I got called out on it by my supervising partner. He said not to do that because he already adjusts before sending the bill out.

[QContinuum]

In order of least bad to actual fraud, this is what I've seen:

People routinely shift around their hours, i.e., they work all day on Sunday but then have nothing to do on Monday. Since you have to report Monday's hours, regardless of what you've done, people will shift their hours to Monday. I get this one.

Other people will round up to the quarter hour every time. I also kind of get this one.

These two are not "bad" at all. W.r.t. the first one, the client gets charged the exact same amount whether the time is recorded on a Sunday or the following weekday so there is zero overbilling and zero overcharging. W.r.t. the second one, it's general practice to round up to the nearest billable increment - whether that's the nearest 0.1 or the nearest 0.25. It's like minutes on a cell phone plan - if you talk to your friend for 1 minute and 2 seconds, you're billed for 2 minutes, because the call time is always rounded up to the nearest minute. That's not unethical/"padding". That's just the reality of billing in 0.1/0.25-hour increments instead of billing by the minute. In fact if you use the Intapp timer, it will do the rounding up automatically.

Finally, a few people have told me they routinely add an hour or two on a daily or weekly basis, depending on what they can get away with.

I'm pretty sure this kind of outright fraud is rare. I don't know of any single person who (admits to) doing this.

Far more common is the practice of keeping the clock running during a quick bathroom break or a trip to the coffee machine down the hall. IMO there are circumstances where it's not unethical to do this. Like, if you spend four hours doing diligence for a client, and in the middle of that time you spend 3 minutes taking a leak, I really don't think it's necessary to keep track of those 3 minutes. But obviously if you spend 4 minutes replying to a quick client email, don't bill the client 0.2 hours by including the time you spent brewing a new cup of coffee after you replied.

Relatedly, I’m interested in hearing of billing practices that involve the opposite. Does anyone cut time as a junior for fear of billing too much and then having partners not give you work? It seems some partners have billing sensitive clients or alternative fee arrangements that are not that reasonable give the rates the firm charges.

And yes, I am aware you should never cut your own time, but have also heard of people doing it. For context, think Am Law 51-100 firm.

Yes, I've cut hours. A few times I did so because I screwed up and had to redo stuff to fix my own mistakes - I'm not going to bill for fixing my own mistakes. Another few times I did so because the partner strongly hinted that I ought to keep my time below a certain cap. But I generally try not to cut my own hours.

[shock259]

Interesting thread. Lying about your time = fraud. Be careful out there, everybody. You can be fired and/or face bar disciplinary problems. There was a Faegre associate in Denver that lied about her time last year and was caught and fired.

[Person1111]

Interesting thread. Lying about your time = fraud. Be careful out there, everybody. You can be fired and/or face bar disciplinary problems. There was a Faegre associate in Denver that lied about her time last year and was caught and fired.

In fairness, that associate outright fabricated over 100 hours, which is extreme and unusual. You should record your time accurately (although no one is perfect and there is room for debate about best practices on the margins), but you should do it because it's the right thing to do - not because you are going to get fired or disbarred.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

I mean, you could easily fabricate over 100 hours if you’re putting you worked 11 hours on a certain day when you actually worked 10. The reason why nobody really gets caught is because that’s incredibly hard to detect. Adding an extra .25 on 4 different matters you worked on each day won’t raise any eyebrows.


She straight up made up work all in one month when she wasn’t even busy. That’s wayyy more obvious.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not going to tell anyone to add hours they didn't work, although it's done frequently. What I will say is to capture all of your time on every given task. Unless your efficiency/realization rate is below 80 percent, or if someone says something to you about you taking too much time, you need to bill all of your time working on a task. If you're only billing 8 hours on a 10-12 hour day, you're doing it wrong unless of course you had 2-3 hours of truly interrupted time, like a CLE in which case you can bill non-billable time anyways.

To a certain extent, when partners review your billing every month on a given matter they look at the total dollar amount and the work produced. If they think the value of the work is what you billed for it, they won't cut your time. I was once told by a partner that if your efficiency rate is close to 100 percent, you're not fairly valuing your work. I think high 80s to mid 90s is where you want to be.

[Bllljd115]

My billing efficiency went way up as a senior associate. I think it was a few reasons: I got much better a managing my workflow so I had a good, steady set of projects to do each day rather than my billing being choppy, I was on a lot more calls (which tend to fill up the day), I was able to outsource smaller projects to juniors and focus on bigger, discrete tasks, and just getting older and having more responsibilities at home incentivized me to cut out wasteful activities during the day.

The other thing, which I do not do very well, is that the more senior you get the more you have the ability not to delegate projects if you think you are going to have a slow week.

[Anonymous User]

My billing efficiency went way up as a senior associate. I think it was a few reasons: I got much better a managing my workflow so I had a good, steady set of projects to do each day rather than my billing being choppy, I was on a lot more calls (which tend to fill up the day), I was able to outsource smaller projects to juniors and focus on bigger, discrete tasks, and just getting older and having more responsibilities at home incentivized me to cut out wasteful activities during the day.

The other thing, which I do not do very well, is that the more senior you get the more you have the ability not to delegate projects if you think you are going to have a slow week.

This.

This is my life as a senior associate summed up. I just delegate less so I always have steady workflow and the inane research projects have floated on to the more junior attorneys in the firm.

For reference I am at an AM Law 30 firm.

[hdivschool]

My billing efficiency went way up as a senior associate. I think it was a few reasons: I got much better a managing my workflow so I had a good, steady set of projects to do each day rather than my billing being choppy, I was on a lot more calls (which tend to fill up the day), I was able to outsource smaller projects to juniors and focus on bigger, discrete tasks, and just getting older and having more responsibilities at home incentivized me to cut out wasteful activities during the day.

The other thing, which I do not do very well, is that the more senior you get the more you have the ability not to delegate projects if you think you are going to have a slow week.

This.

This is my life as a senior associate summed up. I just delegate less so I always have steady workflow and the inane research projects have floated on to the more junior attorneys in the firm.

For reference I am at an AM Law 30 firm.

I am a bit of a specialist, and am generally brought on to do the work myself. I don't have the opportunity to delegate. I sometimes have junior associates to do legal research, but they are so bad at it that it is usually a waste of time to have them do it. That being said, I agree that as I have grown more senior, I do spend more time in meetings/calls.

[estefanchanning]

My billing efficiency went way up as a senior associate. I think it was a few reasons: I got much better a managing my workflow so I had a good, steady set of projects to do each day rather than my billing being choppy, I was on a lot more calls (which tend to fill up the day), I was able to outsource smaller projects to juniors and focus on bigger, discrete tasks, and just getting older and having more responsibilities at home incentivized me to cut out wasteful activities during the day.

The other thing, which I do not do very well, is that the more senior you get the more you have the ability not to delegate projects if you think you are going to have a slow week.

This.

This is my life as a senior associate summed up. I just delegate less so I always have steady workflow and the inane research projects have floated on to the more junior attorneys in the firm.

For reference I am at an AM Law 30 firm.

I am a bit of a specialist, and am generally brought on to do the work myself. I don't have the opportunity to delegate. I sometimes have junior associates to do legal research, but they are so bad at it that it is usually a waste of time to have them do it. That being said, I agree that as I have grown more senior, I do spend more time in meetings/calls.

What makes their legal research bad? They research the wrong question?

[hdivschool]

My billing efficiency went way up as a senior associate. I think it was a few reasons: I got much better a managing my workflow so I had a good, steady set of projects to do each day rather than my billing being choppy, I was on a lot more calls (which tend to fill up the day), I was able to outsource smaller projects to juniors and focus on bigger, discrete tasks, and just getting older and having more responsibilities at home incentivized me to cut out wasteful activities during the day.

The other thing, which I do not do very well, is that the more senior you get the more you have the ability not to delegate projects if you think you are going to have a slow week.

This.

This is my life as a senior associate summed up. I just delegate less so I always have steady workflow and the inane research projects have floated on to the more junior attorneys in the firm.

For reference I am at an AM Law 30 firm.

I am a bit of a specialist, and am generally brought on to do the work myself. I don't have the opportunity to delegate. I sometimes have junior associates to do legal research, but they are so bad at it that it is usually a waste of time to have them do it. That being said, I agree that as I have grown more senior, I do spend more time in meetings/calls.

What makes their legal research bad? They research the wrong question?

The most common and most substantial problems are that their research findings are too general and they often report back dicta, rarely reading cases closely and for their holdings.