Biglaw Perk Watch: Billable Hour Credit During Emergencies or Disasters?
Emergency kits, like the ones doled out by Davis Polk, are nice. But billable-hour credit during an emergency is even nicer.
From a curious correspondent:
Here's a question you may want to pose to your readers: How has your law firm dealt billable hour requirements when the office if officially closed due to an emergency / disaster?I ask this question in connection with the recent southern California wildfires. I've heard that many law firms in So Cal had to close shop for the entire week last week due to the wild-fires. I've also heard that many of these shops are giving associates billable hours credit for the days the office was closed.
I'm curious how often firms do this sort of thing. What did law firms do after 9/11? Or Katrina? Or any of the major CA earthquakes? It wouldn't seem right for a firm to tell attorneys not to come in for a week and then hold them accountable for that week at the end of the year.
But what about telecommuting? Is the ability to work from home a double-edged sword? Now that everyone has a laptop and a Blackberry, can attorneys be expected to fiddle (with merger agreements), while California burns?
More after the jump.
Several additional points for consideration:
At any rate, it would be nice to hear what others have to say on the topic. Oh, and of course of all these law firms have already given secretaries and file clerks the days off without a charge against their vacation time (another example of law firms treating the staff better than associates - which could be another very interesting thread on the differential treatment of staff vs. associates for some other time).Thanks for all that you do. The entire group at my firm regularly reads your site (partners and associates).
So, any thoughts? Did you get a break on billable hours due to some disaster or emergency? Or did your firm keep everything the same, figuring that you can make up a few days' worth of lost billables over the course of an entire year?
(28) Comments
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yo mama - you are a loser.
yo mama - you are a total loser
Work from home and keep on billing...
Anon (1) and (2) - still FIRST!!!!!!!!!
we were closed for 6 days...no one asked if everyone was OK and we were explicitly told to make up for the 6 days of billing.
I billed over 8 hours from home ON 9/11. If the work needs to be done...
"treating the staff better than the associates?"
Sure, because getting a couple extra days of vacation time well makes up for a grown-up legal secretary making about a third of what a 24-year-old snot-nosed first-year associate makes.
12:18: Not to mention that staff gets a fraction of the vacation allowance an associate gets.
At my old firm (in NYC) we got credit for the 2003 Blackout (specific billing code).
At Luce Forward in San Diego they set up a special non-credited account to log time out of the office due to fires that the executive committee will consider during its year end review.
Cravath distributed a specific client/matter number to be used when the office was closed for the blackout.
We were closed for part of the week - and were expected/told to keep on billing even if under mandatory evacuation orders. No credit if no billables but no vacation days taken if nothing billed.
What if you caused the "disaster"?
Don't think the firms are being nice to you by letting you get credit for disasters that shut the shop down.
It's all about the money for them; each firm has business interruption insurance. So for every hour you "bill" during the black out, fire, terrorist attack, they get to pad their insurance claims.
1:07: Wow. That is outrageous.
I worked at Kaye Scholer after the New York Office had a fire, which closed the office building for a few months.
At Kaye, we were in temp. offices in a hotel the next day, and in an office building in 3 weeks.
I don't know how the firm dealt with my hours, but I increased my billable time, because everything took twice as long to do... It was great!
1:26, for real?
1:18, how about the fact that staff gets 401k matching and associates don't? Or the fact that if they spend their entire day surfing the internet because no one has given them work, they don't have to make up for it in their personal time? Or the fact that they didn't go into hundreds of thousands of dollars or debt just for the chance at maybe someday qualifying for the job they hold? And just because an associate is 24 doesn't automatically make him/her snot-nosed. If anything, the younger associates I've seen start out have much more deferential attitudes than the older associates... sometimes the older graduates think that them being older automatically makes them better at their jobs. Newsflash: if you are a first-year associate, it doesn't matter if you were a rocket scientist for twenty years in your first career. That fifth-year associate, the one who's fifteen years younger than you, knows a hell of a lot more about how to do THIS job than you do. Also, partners beat out ALL associates in the category of snot-nosery.
12:29, vacation allowance?
1:18, how about the fact that staff gets 401k matching and associates don't? Or the fact that if they spend their entire day surfing the internet because no one has given them work, they don't have to make up for it in their personal time? Or the fact that they didn't go into hundreds of thousands of dollars or debt just for the chance at maybe someday qualifying for the job they hold? And just because an associate is 24 doesn't automatically make him/her snot-nosed. If anything, the younger associates I've seen start out have much more deferential attitudes than the older associates... sometimes the older graduates think that them being older automatically makes them better at their jobs. Newsflash: if you are a first-year associate, it doesn't matter if you were a rocket scientist for twenty years in your first career. That fifth-year associate, the one who's fifteen years younger than you, knows a hell of a lot more about how to do THIS job than you do. Also, partners beat out ALL associates in the category of snot-nosery.
12:29, vacation allowance?
Zero credit whatsoever for massive snowstorm. Just lots of teleconferencing from home. some people had to get sled dogs! shoulda called it iditarod law firm.
No billing when our firm was blown up on 9/11 (though I guess I could have been creative and billed the "are you alive" calls I made to clients and opposing counsel). We had a special billing number for "recovery" or something like that which we used for things like recreating files, and it did not cound towards our billables.
Um, what good is telecommuting if you've been ORDERED TO EVACUATE YOUR HOME, as were quite a few attorneys at my firm?
at many new york firms, there are no hours requirements, so no need for credit.
My firm in SD is giving us billable credit. Word is about 40 hours.
Many of the attorneys in our OC office (national firm) were dealing with fire issues, so they gave us all 2 days billable credit even though our office remained open last week.
As for disparate treatment, many of the secretaries in our office earn 80K-100K yearly for about 4 hours (or less) of work per day. Do I want their job? No. But a 50% pay cut for 35% of the work I do now doesn't sound too bad.
Most of the Carmel Valley / Del Mar law firms in San Diego are giving billable credit for the days their offices were shut down. I haven't heard the same for the down town offices since those weren't in a mandatory evacuation zone. So from what I can tell the number of credited hours depends on the number of days each firm was closed.