"Billable" refers to work that can be charged or invoiced to a client or customer.
Full definition
The newly adopted initiative gives attorneys up to 50 hours of
billable hour credits for putting time in new innovations.
Using technological procedures instead
of billable hour work puts money back in your pocket even before your case is finished.
Senior lawyers are focused
on billable hours and so on the job training is not encouraged.
If you are already averaging seven hours of
billable work in a day, you can not realistically expect to gain much more time no matter what you do.
Many firms assist this transition with a reduction
in billable targets for a short period of time or greater flexibility around work arrangements.
How you track and account
for billable hours directly impacts your firm's profitability.
After all, cash - strapped clients are no longer as willing to write a blank check for $ 1000 / hour
billable rates.
In other words, if the attorney is taken away
from billable work, that lost time is valued at what would have been earned, not at the attorney's pay rate.
Building, maintaining and growing a significant practice coupled
with billable hour requirements and participating in managing the firm all equal stress.
No lawyer with
billable targets can ever structure and implement any of these innovations or product offerings.
Now, gain back even
more billable time by giving your mouse a rest.
With access to the law office accounting software virtually anywhere with an internet connection, all expenses can be easily recorded
as billable as they happen.
I was particularly impressed by the depth of the financial data accessible through the app and by the capabilities it offers to
track billable time and expenses.
The thing about physicians and attorneys, particularly attorneys, is they live
by billable hours.
The firm has also announced it will not be
increasing billable hourly rates for clients this year.
Add in the control required for loss prevention and the easiest solution is to separate out authors whose books are
not billable through the main book vendor.
In large law firms, there are endless stressors, including countless late nights, sky
high billable hour requirements, and a lack of autonomy.
But this is possible only if they stop thinking
about billable hours as the primary measure of success.
Moving a law office is not a quick or easy process and it always results in
lost billable time.
Is it worth sacrificing home life to
meet billable hour targets for the huge office and high salary?
In terms of
capturing billable time entries, it is my favorite of the three programs I tested.
Under the
traditional billable hour model, a client will instruct you to proceed and you will ask for an upfront retainer.
In fact, some partners may actively discourage associates from spending time on business development activities, if that takes any time away from
doing billable legal work.
These leaders are looking
beyond billable hours, implementing business practices and metrics to increase time - billing productivity and the bottom line.
When participating in marketing initiatives such as visiting clients or writing for the firm's blog take lawyers away from
billable activities, they need to see the reward.
This is at least part of the reason for
annual billable hour rate increases; the assumption of increased value.
Lower billable hour targets, smaller firms, and an easy commute tend to contribute to a decent work - life balance.
He describes how he breaks cases up
into billable segments and allows clients to pay - as - they - go.
From
recording billable hours to explaining fees to clients and reviewing the bill all over again, billing is rarely fun and provides little creative outlet.
A potential contradiction is that many these same firms are unwilling to
reduce billable expectations for business development efforts or even successes.
Learn your firm's numbers by practice group and as a whole: revenues, expenses, leverage ratio,
average billable hours, profitability, cash flow, etc..
Those that do have the power to make great strides, redefine the way legal services are delivered (ideally with
fewer billable hours).
While billable hour pricing is the «norm» for legal services, you will find that our rates are very competitive.
You can
enter billable time on the courthouse steps using your mobile phone or pull up a time - stamped order on your tablet while appearing in court.
In addition to being exposed to a wide range of practice areas, our summer associates take part in
billable client work and pro bono projects.
If billable hours are a substantial measure of performance, delegation is less likely to occur, except when more working time is just not possible / practical.
You want to measure all the time you work, not
just billable hours, so that you can understand the financial health of your law practice.
Use reports to save on storage costs by getting rid of documents that don't belong to
billable matters.
They're expected to
generate billable work with 90 % of their time while slowly learning how to produce that work in the other 10 %.
Yet, many lawyers are spending too
many billable hours on administrative / clerical duties.
These firms have been so focused on leveraging associate time and
maximizing billable hours that they have failed to build a culture of business development within their firms.
Well the sooner they can get this attorneys to be technically skilled as well as legally skilled the sooner they're able to actually rip the benefit of them as fully
billable attorneys.
In speaking with all of you from day to day I am confident in saying that none of you are looking for
less billable time.
One would think that this would mean that lawyers would be pressed to track as
much billable time as possible as easily as possible — especially in the last while.