Biglaw, Billable Hours

What You Should Be Doing With Those Unbillable Hours

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Last week, we surveyed Above The Law readers about their billable hours for 2009. Over 16% of respondents will be billing less than 1600 hours, and the majority of them are billing less than 1500 hours.
Assuming a stingy two weeks of vacation, that means these folks are billing 30 hours per week. Those are not the kind of hours you want to be racking up in Biglaw. But 2009 was slow, and there wasn’t a lot of work to go around.
How did you spend those unbillable hours? We hope a decent percentage of them were spent here at ATL doing “trade media review.” We hope you weren’t spending your time playing Facebook Mafia Wars and getting tricked into opposing health care reform.
We talked to legal recruiter Dan Binstock about what associates should be doing during their unbillable time. He offers advice to low-billers (and anyone gunning for partnership) after the jump.


“If not billing time, the most important thing is for associates to find ways to add value to their firm,” said Binstock, in a phone interview.
D’uh, right? So how do you do that?
“Don’t wait for people to tell you what to do,” said Binstock. He also warned against repeat visits to a partner’s office seeking out work. “When things are slow and partners aren’t keeping their associates busy, they feel like they’re failing. Nervous associates asking for work frequently when there’s none to give out make partners feel even worse. And can prove annoying.”
Pro bono is great from a moral standpoint, and gives associates more experience. “But this is a business,” said Binstock. “And pro bono’s not billable.” Though he said doing pro bono is better than playing fantasy football nothing at all.
Binstock outlined three main activities of focus for the not-busy-enough:

  • Write articles.
  • Write speeches and present at conferences.
  • Help partners with business development.

If writing an article appeals to you, have an idea. (Yes, we know that’s hard sometimes.) Do some research, and then go to your mentor and see what he or she thinks about it. Ask whether it sounds like a good idea and if the partner might be interested in co-authoring it.
If you’ve got a specialty area, Binstock recommends searching for conferences in your area — calling trade organizations is a good way to do this — and pitching yourself to the organizers as a speaker. Everyone loves lawyers on their panels!
Helping partners drum up business is the best of the three options. But Binstock acknowledges the difficulty of that. “It’s really hard for junior associates, who just have to work a lot,” said Binstock. “I realize that all of this advice is easier said than done.”
Still, if you can help partners put together presentations for clients or with RFPs for clients, that will be remembered come layoff bonus time.
Alternately, use this down time to take a business development course. There are counselors who offer this kind of training, and sometimes firms offer classes or will pay course fees to help teach you to become a rainmaker.
The institutional structure of Biglaw makes all of this hard. Hierarchies don’t exactly breed entrepreneurial spirits. “Still it’s always better to be pro-active,” said Binstock. “Rather than being like a person in a restaurant waiting for food to be served.”
Binstock related a conversation he’d had with a Biglaw partner recently. When it came to layoff time, there were associates who had no pro bono, no speeches, no articles, with low hours, who apparently did nothing while not working. There were others with lower hours who did have those activities, and the latter were the associates spared the axe.
Does this sound reasonable to you? What have you been doing in your unbilled time?
Earlier: Counting the 2009 Hours: An End-of-the-Year Follow-up

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