Most attorneys and law students know that tracking and billing time will be a fundamental part of their careers. Today on “If I would have known then” I am discussing the evolution from understanding your billable hour requirement in theory to accepting it as a part of life at a law firm and learning to structure your life around this system.
What I thought then:
When I started at my first law firm, I was told that my billable goal would be 1800 hours per year and I did the math. I realized that if I conservatively subtracted 4 weeks off of a 52 week year (so, 48 weeks, for those of you out there that are not good at math), I ONLY had to bill 37.5 hours per week to meet that goal.
Awesome!
Because, as if I would take off 4 full weeks of work, and yay…I could have 4 full weeks off and still meet this goal.
I thought….GREAT! Piece…of…cake!
Vacation on a warm sunny beach, here I come! Because I am finally making a decent income that is not all going to paying my rent, books and tuition. And I could use a vacation after 4 years of full-time working plus law school, plus studying nearly all summer for the bar exam, plus waiting to find out that I passed, plus hoping against hope that I would actually get hired by a decent law firm…well, you get the idea. I needed that vacation!
But, I digress…
Backing up, I had become accustomed to working in my first “real” job (as a scientist at a household name corporation) for well over 40 hours per week, so this was going to be easy-peasy. And for the first two years that I was a law student (part-time at 11 credits per semester, mind you), I was working this over full-time job (which was a ton of work). Again, I thought…this 37.5 hour billable goal will be a BREEZE, compared to that very difficult time management season.
Surprise! Not so!
What I know now:
Billing 37.5 hours per week – which does equal 4 weeks off in a year for a goal of 1800 hours – sounds do-able. On paper, and in a mythical land we’ll call Oz, 37.5 hours per week absolutely can be accomplished. But then life happens. You need to take CLE credits to stay licensed. In an ideal world you will have perfectly mapped out your 15 credits per year that you will take to get them all entered within the 3-year reporting window.
Then that does not happen. You work when the work needs to be done and it doesn’t flow smoothly and evenly. Sometimes work is slow. And because you hadn’t really been organized to plan for that, you don’t have time to book a vacation last-minute. So you hang around the office looking for something to do. Then you start asking other partners if they have work. And they all do. At the same time. And it needs to be done tomorrow. Problem solved! Now you are billing a ton of time. But you have no time off.
Then there are holidays, and sick time (you will get sick, because you will get stressed by a variety of things, including trying to be more organized in your work and personal life, and stress compromises your immune system, so…you get sick).
So there are days off for holidays, other family events, and CLEs, and time off when you’re sick. Oh, and don’t forget time off for sick kids. If a family is part of your long term plan, it happens.
And somehow, that 4 weeks gets used up way faster than you thought – with time off that you had to take (sick, tired) vs. the time off that you wanted to take (bye-bye warm, sunny vacation fantasy). Slowly but surely, these type of “days off” have eaten up your 4 weeks completely.
Before you know it, it’s September. And you haven’t had a weekend off in forever. And you keep trying to stay ahead of that ticking billable clock.
So you count up your billed time so far this the year and realize that you are almost a full month short of your goal, because it has been really slow this month and the clients that were going to pull the trigger on work decided not to, until their budget permits. Or your case settled, or the week of depositions got postponed. And the time you should take off now to relax is spent obsessing over how you may not meet your goal this year. Even if you decide to take a “mental health day,” out of the office does NOT equal a mental vacation.
But, with all that being said,
I also have some really good news…
There are some other things about the billable hours system that I didn’t know or appreciate back then.
You become much more at ease with the billable hours system. Like anything, you get used to it. You realize that everyone is facing the same battle. The best you can do is accept it and manage it, to the best of your ability. The secret is…that this is just the way it is. Your time is what clients are paying for, and everyone – including your supervisor – knows how hard and stressful it is to worry about meeting a billable hour mark with so many things that fall outside your control.
You will have better billing months (and years) and worse billing months and years. And along the way you’ll learn how to manage the busy times and the slow times.
• You learn to be wiser in your commitments – both work and personal.
• You learn the best ways to manage the expectations of your family and friends.
• You learn what components of your personal life you will compromise when times get busy.
• You learn to define and protect the non-negotiable aspects of your life.
• You learn to find those quick, last-minute deals on [insert well-known flight and hotel rental vacation websites] and take them.
• You learn that life isn’t always controllable and you need to just relax and do the best you can to manage the ups and downs. Because your best is all you have…and it really is good enough.
After a few years you will look back and realize you transitioned and adjusted just fine, while you weren’t even looking.
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