Billable Hours, Holidays and Seasons

Managing Partner Sends Cheerful Holiday Reminder That Associates May Be Fired Tomorrow

This Thanksgiving, perhaps you should've been thankful that you had a job.

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Law firm associates live and die by the billable hour, but come holidays like Thanksgiving, sometimes timekeeping falls to the wayside in favor of spending time with family and friends. But just because you had the testicular fortitude to reward yourself with a long weekend doesn’t mean you got a pass from entering your time.

Time is money, and law firm managing partners don’t have any of it to waste when it comes to their year-end collections. This Thanksgiving, perhaps you should’ve been thankful that you had a job, because come tomorrow, you may find yourself unemployed if you don’t turn in your timesheets — at least if you work at this national plaintiffs firm.

This weekend, we received an internal memo from Steve Berman, the managing partner of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, regarding the recording of billable hours at the firm. For what it’s worth, Berman has repeatedly been named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. While Berman may be a remarkable attorney when it comes to the results he gets for clients, this memo makes him sound like a remarkable d-bag.

Our tipster notes that the email — entitled “its [sic] year end” — was sent out at 12:32 p.m. on the day before Thanksgiving. “Happy Holidays! Geesh!!! What a prick!” says our disgruntled informant. Without further ado, here’s the content of that email:

I am doing year end stuff and find that some timekeepers don’t have large blocks of time recorded. so I can’t do some of the planning I was going to do. Anyone who has more than a week of time not in by close of business Monday will be dismissed from the firm Tuesday am.

This is harsh but time keeping promptly and accurately is a rule at the firm.

We’ve seen partners threaten to dock associates’ pay for poor timekeeping, and we’ve even seen a partner wax hypothetical about firing delinquent timekeepers, but we’ve never seen a partner flat-out guarantee that associates’ jobs would be terminated on a specific date and time unless their billable hours were recorded.

We feel for Berman, we really do. Associates exist on this planet to make money for their firms, and they’re supposed to enter their time, on time. It’s a part of their job, and when they don’t do it, it makes it more difficult for the firm to make ends meet.

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But for a law firm’s managing partner to send out an email like this on the day before Thanksgiving? That’s just low. Berman’s threat was the equivalent of writing something along the lines of “season’s greetings, now please go f*ck yourselves.” This was way harsh, Steve. Prompt and accurate timekeeping may be a rule at your firm, but compassion and empathy are rules all human beings should follow.

For the sake of your livelihoods, Hagens Berman associates, we hope you turn in all of your tardy timesheets by the end of the day.

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