john quinn, Money

John Quinn Cracks a New Year's Whip

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Most people know that partners often write off associate hours and paralegal hours when it comes time to bill clients. Quinn Emanuel is no different.

But managing partner John Quinn has had enough. Just before Christmas, Quinn sent around an email to his fellow partners (no associates were included on the distribution list) urging them to keep a closer eye on billing:

Month in and month out, partners request write‑offs from bills, giving the same reasons. All of them are preventable. The most common reasons are as follows:

Among the reasons Quinn listed was associates taking their own initiative by assigning work to paralegals:

Associates or others delegating work. One sure way to lose control of staffing on a case is to tolerate associates assigning out work to other associates or paralegals. Associates are told they shouldn’t do this, but it happens from time to time. Associates need to be reminded that they do not have authority to assign work to others.

Bang! Well, tell us what you really think:

Associates being inefficient, spending too much time on assignments. For any significant assignment, an associate should always be given a time budget ‑‑ how much time they should spend on the project or how much time they should spend before reporting to the partner on their progress. It should never come as a surprise to a partner that an associate has spent twice as much time as the partner expected.

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Read the full Quinn memo after the jump to learn more about how partners really think.


JOHN QUINN — MEM0 — SAME OLD REASONS FOR WRITE-OFFS

Month in and month out, partners request write‑offs from bills, giving the same reasons. All of them are preventable. The most common reasons are as follows:

1. An attorney was not approved to be working on the matter. Increasingly, clients are requesting pre-approval for all timekeepers. A team of lawyers will be approved by a client and then, a few months later, an unapproved attorney or paralegal will log some time which the client refuses to pay for. This is simple: always get approval for additional timekeepers, and make sure that everyone on the team knows that no one else is approved to work on the matter.

2. Budgets are exceeded. Often budgets are exceeded because of unanticipated events. Other times, the budget did not represent a good estimate in the first place. Controlling client expectations regarding budgets begins with the budget itself. It should always be prefaced with a written caution to the client that there will be many events in the litigation which will contribute to cost which we cannot control and that, in the event of any variance between the budget and what our time charges actually are, our time charges control, not the budget. That said, as soon as it appears that a budget is going to be exceeded, attorneys need to be proactive to warn the client. The client should not first learn that a budget will be exceeded when he receives a bill.

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3. Associates or others delegating work. One sure way to lose control of staffing on a case is to tolerate associates assigning out work to other associates or paralegals. Associates are told they shouldn’t do this, but it happens from time to time. Associates need to be reminded that they do not have authority to assign work to others.

4. Associates being inefficient, spending too much time on assignments. For any significant assignment, an associate should always be given a time budget ‑‑ how much time they should spend on the project or how much time they should spend before reporting to the partner on their progress. It should never come as a surprise to a partner that an associate has spent twice as much time as the partner expected.

5. Indexing and organizing files for storage at the conclusion of a matter. This frequently results in thousands of dollars in charges which the partner wants to write off. At the end of a matter, ask the client what the client wants done with the files. If we spend time indexing and organizing the files because that’s what the client wants done, the client should be charged for it. Otherwise we should not do it.

6. Getting new lawyers up to speed. Sometimes there will be a change in personnel on a case because a lawyer gets “pulled off” to work on another matter. Unaccountably, this often seems to happen after an attorney has just been assigned to a case, but has devoted a week or two to the matter. There will then be a request to write off the “pulled off” lawyer’s time, or the new lawyers getting up to speed time, or both. These types of changes in personnel should be resisted and, if necessary, only done with a clear understanding of the consequences for the bill.

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