I guess it depends on what you're thinking about while you're on the can.

There are a number of attorneys who turn on the clock when they get to the office and turn it off when the leave.

In their warped view, they eat, sleep, and shit billable work.

I just billed a client .2 for typing this!

Simple, everything gets billed unless I'm affirmatively not working. If I'm at the office for 10 hours, and I take an hour lunch, and I jerk off for 30 minutes, then someone has to pay for 8.5 hours of time. Grabbing a coke, going to the bathroom, checking my docket, organizing my day's activites, or next day's activities, cleaning out the gunk in my mouse, staring out the window wondering why I subject myself to this... someone has to pay. If this is wrong, then I want a discount on my next burger at McDonalds for all the time the employees are grab assing. I don't know why anyone would expect the legal market to be any different than any other market where the employees don't operate at 100% efficiency. If they didn't want to spend money, they shouldn't have talked to me. Nataully though, I'm more sensitive regarding time logged for smaller clients. Big clients can blow me though.

as long as you are thinking about the client while in the bathroom, it is billable. Also, so long as you are back within 6 minutes, the entire 6 minute block is billable. Just like, so long as you limit your reading of this blog to 5 minutes, the 6 minute block is billable.

There's also a built in protection against too much padding. If I bill 12 hours doing something that should have taken 4, the partner notices. And then I stop getting good work.

Do you bill time spent THINKING about a mtter in the car on your commute? I think its legit.

It takes 30 minutes for you to jerk off?

My firm has file-holders in the bathroom stalls ... I think that means we're supposed to bill while on the shitter.

Do people's billing practices change perceptibly toward year's end? Has anybody been called on it?

My billables were low last year, so I clearly have no game with respect to billing.

Here is an interesting question: What firms are represented by the commenters on this blog? Here is why I ask:http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1186132006376

I'm not just a piece of meat. I need to be seduced. I need to feel special. I need to be loved.

I'm not just a piece of meat. I need to be seduced. I need to feel special. I need to be loved.

>It takes 30 minutes for you to jerk off?

Not if it's just once, no.

I used to work for a partner that would schedule a solid day of conference calls and then spend the day saying nothing on them and drafting emails and letters to client and calling me in to explain research to him while the phone was on mute. he'd be in the office for 10 hours or so that day everyweek, and bill for no less than 16 ... i'm still not sure whether he's incredibly unethical ... or brilliant

As to the gin factor, I've worked for a partner who goes out of his way to create needless, time consuming, billable work for assocaites to do that has little to no value to the case. I'm talking ridiculous stuff, not just researching every possible minute detail of law that might apply to an issue. He especailly does this when its a big money client.

I find this much more deplorable than me billing .1 for walking to the can.

Sure it takes thirty minutes... six times at 5 min...

I used to work for a partner that would schedule a solid day of conference calls and then spend the day saying nothing on them and drafting emails and letters to client and calling me in to explain research to him while the phone was on mute. he'd be in the office for 10 hours or so that day everyweek, and bill for no less than 16 ... i'm still not sure whether he's incredibly unethical ... or brilliant

This is a big reason why I work for a LOT less money. I went to a top-10 US News law school, worked for a top litigation firm for 4 years, then ratcheted down. I make 2/3 what the big firm first years are making but I can both work 9-5 and bill ultra-honestly. If these 2000-2200 hour/year folks are really billing without padding, they are marvels of nature. One day the clients are going to catch on.

in some rare but very enjoyable instances, i will bill for work i am assigned but that i never do. i am able to do this b/c i know as soon as i receive certain assignements that no one will ever speak of it again.

My firm bills in 6 minutes blocks, as most places do- I run around the office pretty fast, often bowling over hapless, complacent secretaries in my wake, and so my general rule is that I bill for #1 but not for #2.

I've tried to work in the can and bill for #2 in the past, but I stopped doing this because I would get so distracted by the chatter (people laughing, crying, thinking aloud, or, the worst, self-motivational talk) coming from the neighboring toilets.

And I'll just put this out there- If you are one of the people that practices self-motivation- ie "C'mon baby!" or "Oh yeah, there it is!" or "Yee-hah!" etc. - Just please stop this. It's messing with my billables, and it is socially undesirable.

I see NOTHING! I know NOTHING!

12:04, what is your job?

assistant fluffer.

12:04:

I think you underestimate the BigLaw client. They know how the system works, but they realize it is the cost of doing business.

I've been reading ATL for half an hour, and billing every minute of it

so if I fall asleep at my desk and my dream involves a client can I bill them for that?

12:08:

I'm sure there are plenty of partners/clients who would let you bill for that.

Doesn't a lot of associate work get billed down anyway? I don't think the client necessarily feels the sting of billing generously.

12:04: In most Biglaw matters, the "client" is effectively the in-house legal department of a corporation, and that in-house legal department is staffed with people who came from Biglaw and engaged in the same billing practices. There is little reason to believe that clients will "catch on." They've already "caught on" and they're playing along.

12:05: great idea for those ridiculous projects that seem to disappear.

Good point, 12:19.

12:12-

Yes, I often bill for sex dreams about my clients.

I oftentimes bill clients which I frequent. For example, Albertson's is a client of ours, so I will bill an hour's worth of time every week for the time it takes to go to the grocery store. Unethical? No. On the other hand, it would be unethical if I billed an hour that week if my wife did the grocery shopping.

Similarly, I just saw the Simpson's movie, and so I will bill 90 minutes to News corp. this week.

And I sleep on a Serta mattress, so I bill 8 hours every day to them.

Suffice it to say, I am my firm's record high-biller.

So here's the question: If i'm sleeping with one of my clients' daughters is that technically billable time on client matters, or practice development? Or can i not start counting it until I start banging his wife???

I'm often selective about who I'll bill for dinner/car home. I may have done six hours worth of work for a client in the morning/early afternoon, but if that client is a billable black hole, I'll generally bill them for car rides home if the work I did at night is for a stingy client.

bill for simple things like opening mail envelopes

I bill everything I can as long as my efficiency doesn't take a huge hit.

Do any other firms have an efficiency metric? We bill whatever we want, and then the partner "writes off" (or discounts, or otherwise lowers the amount) to what s/he deems allowable and the client gets billed only that amout. What gets paid by the client after the write off, divided by what we initially billed = our efficiency.

Thus we can bill whatever ungodly amount we want. But if a lot of our time gets discounted because of stupidly high hours, our efficiency goes down. Then, at quarterly review, the partners whip out your low efficiency and beat you with it.

12:37 - so do you get credit (for bonus purposes) for what you actually bill, or for what the partner actually bills the client?

I worked for a partner whose secretary would bill 4-5 hours a day for him (at $500 per) just for opening all the mail, reading it, and meeting with him for ten minutes to summarize. Those 0.2 "review and analyze" entries really add up, especially if a non-lawyer community college graduate is doing the reading and analyzing for you. Now that is high quality legal work, not to mention ethical. It seemed to be the norm at that firm...I don't work there anymore.

Hey anon1159 - you must work in my office!

I do my best thinking taking a crap. I double bill my time in there.

Of course you should bill restroom breaks geez! Bill everything related to the contract, and yes, restroom breaks are assumed to be included, as are short chats with co-workers and the occasional internet news update.

I once worked for a partner who "billed" 3500+ hours/year and yet left well before 5 every day thanks to the work of his paralegals/law clerks/bitch associates.

What about the late Sunday night/early Monday morning anxiety "mind racing" due to the impending week's horror? Work-induced insomnia? If so, I could hit 3000+ no problem...

11:47 -- I hope that was a joke and that I will sound like just another humorless lawyer in pointing out that there is a difference between your McDonald's example and not turning off the clock at a law firm, where inflated time will be passed on directly to the client. I agree that most employees are not efficient 100% of the time, but I also think that most of us know when the "efficiency" argument has passed into bill padding (i.e., fraud).

I worked for a couple of partners like the one described by 12:02. One openly referred to his billing practices as "value billing" and complained that I was "too efficient."

I pretty much bill for any time I'm in the office after 8PM, regardless of what I'm doing. Feel great about it too.

As a first year, I've had a hard time figuring out what marginal activities are billable, and in response to my queries was basically told that it was whatever I felt was ethical. This begs the question: what it ethical? For example, is there any authority to back up the #1 vs. #2 distinction? And if everyone pads, but the clients assent to the system, as some assert, does that make it ethical?

I'm currently billing at a respectable pace (honestly, in my opinion). Similarly, I would suspect that the majority of associates believe they are billing ethically (though their definitions of "ethical" may vary widely), but perhaps there are a good percentage who knowingly pad their time. I would be interested in a poll or series of polls exploring these issues (e.g., do you bill ethically, do you bill going to kitchen for coffee, or going to the restroom).

I agree with 2:00, I'll not bill a break at 10:00 am, but at 10:00 pm it's all billable.

If I dream about a case, do I get to bill the real time (30-40 seconds of REM sleep) or the perceived time (minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc.)?

For example, one time I dreamed about drafting a deposition outline. In the dream I worked for three days and wasn't allowed to leave my desk by the partner on the case. Can I bill 72 hours to the client for deposition prep, when the dream actually only lasted 30 seconds? Conundrum.

Let’s say you are composing an argument in a legal brief. You take a quick bathroom break. Do you really stop running alternative sentences and phrases through your mind while draining the proverbial Lizard?

I thought not. Ergo, it is legitimate to keep the clock going.

As a personal billing policy, I do not bill the client for may time when I take him/her to lunch. Even if we discuss a matter. Nothing pisses off a client more.

Speaking as a former client of a Biglaw firm mentioned earlier among the links in this particular thread, all of the billing techniques described above were overused in the course of that firm's representation of my employer in a large litigation matter.

Biglaw was particularly tone-deaf in responding to our concerns about the bills. The billing partner routinely "wrote off" associate time (he was so proud of himself for his great generosity in announcing that we didn't have to pay for most of the SA time!), but the bills were still enough to feed, house and clothe a large portion of New York City's homeless population. The final product was mediocre at best much of the time, but it was impossible to rein in or impose any order on the process. The junior associates did virtually nothing of value, and their understanding of the highly technical subject matter of the case was negligible, yet the amounts of money we were expected to pay for their time was astounding. New names would appear on the bills every month, billing rates would increase at odd times of year (spring and fall) with no announcement or notice, and we would be charged for dinner and a car service for a couple of associates who had billed less than an hour on those days.

I didn't start out questioning the bills, because I knew it would be expensive and that it was an inherently unpredictable process. The firm's arrogance, failure to communicate honestly or clearly, and cavalier attitude toward a non-Fortune 100 client forced me to read EVERY line of the bills (including hotel bills for 20 people during a lengthy out-of-town trial) and compile detailed spreadsheets supporting our demand for credits.

It was a miserable experience and part of the reason I am on a different career track now. The system is broken. Anyone who can figure out a better and fairer way of delivering legal services will be very busy and very successful person.

3:12: Which firm was this? Are they hiring?

3:12: Agreed on all fronts, even though the broken system feeds my relatively cushy associate lifestyle. But if clients keep paying, what is the motivation to change? A "better and fairer" way sounds like "reduced income, more work" to me.

Bill padding = wealth redistribution.
I pay a Mexican by the hour to hold my balls in a soup ladle while I relax in my office, thinking about my next meal and trying to decide which corporate sucker will foot the bill. I also tip the Third World delivery guys in gold ducats.

What's with all this nonsense? Can somebody please confirm Hunton and K&L Gates raising to 160 in DC?

2:19 -- "whatever you feel is ethical" probably means, "I don't want to spell out the many ways in which I am unethical" or "I can't tell you to bill the client for everything, but who cares." There are some people in our profession who are truly ethical and can go with their gut feeling of whether they are truly thinking about client issues as they walk to the kitchen for a coke or whether the time is so de minimis that the client would not care and/or would expect that time to be included in the bill. I personally tend to assume that clients would not expect to have much of that type of time, if any, included in their bills.

I have a feeling that if most associates added up "minutes I spent thinking about client-related work while going to the bathroom or to grab a coke" vs. "minutes I spent not thinking about client-related work while surfing the internet, staring out the window, etc.," the associates are not losing any time if they don't bill the 2 minute walk to the kitchen. That's not to say that most associates don't keep the clock running during those situations and I am always surprised at how open other associates are re talking about somewhat questionable billing practices -- like one associate who told me that he thinks it contributes to his efficiency to take internet surfing breaks here and there, therefore, he has no problem billing for them. It is more rare (in my experience) to find a partner who will tell you anything other than you should only be billing for time worked and "I don't charge clients for x, y, and z." Whether those partners actually follow their stated practices and whether they are giving you subtle hints to overbill at the same time is an entirely different inquiry.

A fellow partner religiously takes a shit each morning at 10 AM. On the stall floor in front of his dangling fat feet are reams of legal documents, memos, etc. He spends an hour laying cable and sifting through papers. Then he cinches everything up, flushes and exits the bathroom (w/o washing his hands) where he then proceeds to dump all the shit (pardon the expression) on his secretary's desk for her to organize. She's dumber than a hockey puck and apparently devoid of two critical senses, those being sight and smell, so merrily goes about the task. Been the same routine 5 days a week for 8 years. Nobody male in this office of 150 lawyers is bold and daring enough to step into George's hallowed stall.

Everyone is complaining about overbilling, and that is bad. But has anyone suffered from cheap clients? Also, how do your firms handle write offs? Do the hours still count for your total?
I did some work for a partner in another office who was notorious for having cheap skate clients. This is a typical story of how things went. He'd call and say, "I need you to go to [a town 45 minutes away by car] to do due diligence for a transaction. This WILL ONLY TAKE you five or six hours." I'd ask for background specifics of the deal. He wouldn't give me any and just say to do the "full thorough review." I'd get there and there would be a data room with documents it would take days for one person to go through. I'd race through it in one 8 hour day, and the partner would still moan about my 9.5 billed hours (you'd better beleive I bill travel time.) He tried to get me to knock back my time. I refused. Our firm actually counted all hours submitted by associates. If the partner wrote them off, that was on him. What do other firms do?

If I dream about a case, do I get to bill the real time (30-40 seconds of REM sleep) or the perceived time (minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc.)?

For example, one time I dreamed about drafting a deposition outline. In the dream I worked for three days and wasn't allowed to leave my desk by the partner on the case. Can I bill 72 hours to the client for deposition prep, when the dream actually only lasted 30 seconds? Conundrum.

I bill for time spent going #1, and #2 if it's a quick one. However, if I pull out my Blackberry and play Brickbreaker, I stop billing.

I do not bill for time in the bathroom. I do not bill for breaks, trips to get a Coke, etc. I don't bill for internet viewing and surfing, though I agree they contribute to efficiency.
I am encouraged to bill everything I think is reasonable, then the partner writes down whatever amount he thinks is appropriate. I get full credit for every minute I record when bonuses are given out.

I bill for every waking minute I am in this God forsaken Big Law office. If I'm taking a stress-induced dump? You betcha I'm billing. If I'm staring at my 46 year old secretary's shapely ass and unbelievable breasts? You betcha I'm billing. Just like every SOB partner in this Am Law 100 firm. The billable hour is a joke. And clients know it. It is so disconnected from the value of the work produced. The equation is going to change, and soon. Savvy clients are pushing back on their legal bills (even those from our uppity shop). Billing by the hour and paying associates of the same law class the same amount of dough is idiotic. Any other business would be out of business under this practice.

3:51, I actually laughed aloud. My old office had a female version of that, although not as egregious as an hour, and as far as I know, the secretary didn't have to touch it right after.

Let the clock run for bathroom trips, vending machine, quick internet breaks, etc. if I anticipate it will take 10 minutes or less, especially if some of that time will be spent thinking about the client. More than 10 minutes and I'll turn it off (or if I left it running, remove that time at the end of the day).

My version of "do what you think is ethical" is to ask, if I were a client watching how I spent my time, would it be reasonable to be pissed off that I didn't stop the clock? Getting another cup of coffee to be more alert for the boring ass work they were doing for me? Fine. 0.4 for an office gossip session? Not so much.

3:51/4:45

How did they keep their legs from falling asleep? I can barely walk if I spend 10 minutes on the can reading the paper, let alone an hour.

I'd like to see an entire thread related to how firms treat written-off time. I heard that Brinks (IP shop) in Chicago only credits you with half for any write-off time.

My mother, a legal secretary, once received a stack of papers back from a bathroom-tripping partner with a piece of dirty TP stuck between pages. Not the way to endear oneself to your staff.

5:04,

Does your mother have a shapely ass and unbelievable breasts? LOL, 4:38.

That gives whole new meaning to having a crappy job, 5:04.

I once billed for a dream, but only because I actually had an idea which proved useful to the case.

I resolved the "actual time v. perceived time" issue - raised by 2:41 - by billing the amount of time it would have reasonably taken to arrive at that idea in the waking world.

Since then, I've escaped most of the billable hour pressure by becoming a full-time firefighter and doing legal research and writing projects on the side...

I told the "billing while dreaming" story to my fellow firefighters, and they still tease me about it at every opportunity.

I don't understand taking an overly painstaking approach to billing.

The rental car company charges me for an entire day, even if the car sits in the lot for 12 hours.

In the olden days, when you paid for dial-up Internet service by the minute, you paid even for the time the connection ground to a halt.

Every private attorney I've ever asked charges for travel time.

The point is, when someone is paying for time, s/he doesn't get the luxury of arbitrarily deciding what time is productive and what isn't. If I'm only capable of focusing my mental energies on the problem at hand for 45 minutes out of every hour, that's part of the client's cost of doing business. I refuse to subsidize my clients by stopping the clock every time I have to get a drink, wipe my rear end, or clear my head.

12:06 to 175

3:40 to 180

1:53 - It wasn't a joke. It's dead on economics. Clients should not have any less expectation of waste at a law firm than they do when they take the kiddies to McDonalds.

'The point is, when someone is paying for time, s/he doesn't get the luxury of arbitrarily deciding what time is productive and what isn't."

Interesting point.

Hypo 1: Partner is thinking about a Client A matter while banging the General Counsel of Client B. Assuming Partner is actually also showing some concern for the pleasure being provided to the General Counsel, may Partner bill both clients for this time?

Hypo 2: Same scenario, except Partner is married to the General Counsel of Client C and is also somewhat concerned about being caught. May Partner now bill all three clients for this time?

Bonus: Assuming the sex act only takes four minutes, may Partner bill for the whole six minute standard increment?

http://boredlaw.blogspot.com/2007/08/client-billing-ethics.html