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Chief
What does everyone have for billable hours?
Rising Star
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Has anyone at their firm negotiated hourly pay?
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Chief
That's 38 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. Call it 7.5 hours per day. I'm not saying it's easy, but it is doable. My biggest piece of advice is to start your day early. If you can knock out 5ish hours by lunch and only have a few left for the afternoon, you're in good shape. Obviously lawyer hours are not that predictable/steady, but it's just a good framework.
Of course, while you can remind everyone to give you work, ultimately it's on the senior associates and partners to direct work your way.
Rising Star
Oh - and if you are not sure how to Bill for something, ask! If a junior or paralegal asks me how to bill for something I can usually tell them right off the top of my head how it should look on the bill and what they should say.
I have a 1900 minimum and made 2000+ last year while maintaining a good work life balance (boutique lit). First key is use timers and capture all your time: I’ll easily hit 7+ billables in a 9 hour day by just making sure I’m really capturing it. DO NOT write down your own time because stuff “takes too long” - it takes what it takes (and talk to a mentor or someone senior about writing good time entries). Be efficient when you’re at work- messing around on the internet can wait.
Second, figure out what 9-10 hours works best for you- I like to start early (730 or 8), take 5-8 pm for my kids, and then work again from 8 pm if needed (not every day). If I didn’t have kids it might be different but I eat family dinner almost every night. I don’t work Friday night or Saturday generally except in dire emergencies.
Finally, accept that it’s “streaky” and embrace the “streaks” - one week you’ll travel to 4 depositions and bill 80, other weeks you’ll be lucky to break 30. But if you’re slow for a couple weeks ask around.
With a few “big weeks” here and there I’ve been able to take vacations, attend kids stuff, and almost always have at least Saturday and often whole weekends plus firm holidays free and still easily hit my time. Good luck!
A10 your schedule sounds just like mine! I also have the same target. I add my hobbies to my calendar to make myself maintain that balance, and it helps me be motivated to hit my hours by the target time.
Grab every doc review you can and it shouldn’t be painful to squeeze an hour here and there in after work hours.
Do the math before you freak out. I've hit 2000 hours without losing all my weekends (my parents are older too, so I always have to be sure to see them). I even dated for three years while hitting 2000 hours, so it's definitely possible (though you will be busy). 1900 hours is 36.5 per week. If you want to take two weeks off total during the year (you do), it's 38 hours/ week billed. That means some weeks will be 45-50 hours billed and you'll work part of your weekend, maybe you'll have a couple of weeks where you work on both days of the weekend, but some weeks will be 25-30 hours billed because you're doing biz dev or because you're in a slow month. That's ok. Try to enjoy the slow months. I had three months this billing year with only about 100-110 hours, but I'm still going to hit 1900, because I've had a couple of months at 180+. It generally works out. (I've been an associate for 7 years, so I've got some experience behind that.)
Crank it out on the weekdays and then just try to enjoy your weekends as much as possible
I really think 1900 is not at challenging a target as you think. In addition, depending on your firm, 1900 is really a great hard target where the firm is going to be very pleased when you hit it rather than just so-so about it. Many associates at lots of big law firms do not actually hit their goal. Scoop up work but don’t kill yourself. If your firm is pushing you to average above 2000k I’d suggest you look for another firm after a couple years. Show initiative for the first year and really take everything. After that, if you are good, you can actually turn people down strategically “I’m doing this this and this but I’m happy to get that to you by X if that works?” If that causes a partner to never ask you to help again or give you a bad review you’ve dodged a bullet.
Get a passive timekeeping tool to capture all the billable time you don’t even think about when you do your time entries and that literally adds up to hours per week (if not per day). You know all those times you review some sort of pleading, notice or case document or you spend time reviewing the file or strategizing with your team. That stuff is the easiest to forget because it typically doesn’t result in tangible paper work product and you either forget about the task altogether or you underestimate the time you spent. A pass of time keeping tour will literally track all the movements on your computer and phone and other devices related your client matters and use artificial intelligence to start categorizing certain tasks with their respective client matters. It’s brilliant because it’ll show you exactly how much time you spent in an email to a client and then memorize that clients email as related to a certain matter and you can start to create pre-written time entries and categories for yourself that integrate with a lot of different time keeping software to add automatically. But even if it’s not integrated with your software it’ll still produce an easy set of time entries that captures every minute you spent on billable work at your computer or other device and you can copy paste that into your time keeping software. I billed another 50 hours a month when I started using this tool. It’s amazing.
I recommend wise time as the best tool and it’s about $30 a month but there’s other ones as well. I used to use chrometa but it is not as good as others. 
Incredible!
Rising Star
LOL you and me both
Rising Star
Yep, pretty much all of this.
One other thing I’d add—now with things shifting to more remote work, you can probably go see your parents and just work remotely. Make sure you left them know you need to work during working hours, but afterwards you have time to see them. Just a thought.
Never cut your time. That’s not your job. Account for everything you do even if it seems silly and your boss can take it up you with you if necessary (and they will, when you get your bonus for crushing it).
My first year at an insurance defense firm gave me 2,250 target for the year, 2 years out of law school. For 75k. Firm with 150ish attorneys across a dozen offices. Somehow they couldn't figure out why they couldn't retain associates for longer than 18 months. 1900 seems like a breeze
When does ur year end?
You don’t need to work 12 hour days every day to hit 1900. Some days are longer but then you can have shorter days on other days and there’s definitely time to see your parents if only hitting 1900
1,900 is super manageable. I was at 2,220 at my old firm, which was doable with 10 hour weekdays before I had a kid. Then I had a kid, so I changed firms to get down to 1,900. Agree with the other posters, aim to bill 7.5 - 8 hours per weekday and you are set. If you can hit 8, then you give your self some wiggle room for ending early some Fridays or taking a 3 day weekend when you need it.
What types of law do y'all work in with those billable requirements? What size firm? What increments do you bill in? We didn't have official requirements until we started working remote but have kept them since returning to the office. We're a small family law firm with much easier minimums to meet, so I'm just curious about the above questions.
Had 2,220 at east coast insurance defense and 1,900 at smaller mixed practice midsize east coast firm.
As to your personal life--and to the extent feasible, throw money at every errand and task possible so that you can expand the time you have for family and friends and just to relax. Parents need full range childcare--not outside daycare--or at least people who will cover pickup at daycare if needed. Use delivery services for pretty much everything--though perhaps you do this already--or unless you love the activity itself, as many enjoy grocery shopping--even in a mask!
Every thing I do is memorialized in a letter or an email and that always goes along with a file review. Time entries should tell a story, beginning - middle - end of the task. I bill 9-11 hours in a 6-8 hour day routinely because my goal isn’t to just to bill it’s to be productive.
Definitely unethical…
I work backwards every day. That is, I always know how many hours of the day so far I wasn’t able to bill and focus on keeping that number low. 1 hour lost per day is great. 2 hours is kind of ok. More than that is a fail. As other have said, you need to average about 7.5 per weekday for 50 weeks. If you are willing to work a few weekend hours, that can come pretty easily. As long as you have the work to do!
Start as early as you can-7am-8am without the phone ringing can be more productive than the next four hours combined-make a to-do list, do the most difficult task on your list first-before the phones start ringing, people start walking into your office asking questions or shooting the breeze-& don’t read & reply to emails continuously-work for 44 mins, stop & do emails for 15 mins, & so on-whatever works for you but just don’t let it be a constant interruption to your thought process. You’ll be amazed @ how much more you get done. Good luck. It’s way too much.
Proof.
Bill everything you can, and get to the office before the distractions start. Idk about you all but I lose so much time between 8 and 5 changing tasks and making notes