Associates at law firms often have numerous other tasks in addition to billing hours to clients. Indeed, associates often need to deal with expense reimbursements, time entry, and other administrative tasks that can make it difficult to bill as many hours as possible. However, some law firms do not provide their associates with any relief that could make them more efficient at billing hours. Law firm managers need to think about inefficiencies their associates might experience and ensure that it is as easy as possible for associates to bill hours.
When I was an associate at various law firms, I was surprised at how partners would not lift a finger even though it would make it much easier for associates to devote additional time to billing hours and earning more revenue for the firm. For instance, I used to travel in various associate attorney roles, and that required me to submit expense reimbursements. Sometimes, I would appear at depositions, court conferences, and the like for multiple clients, and the clients would only be billed their proportionate share of the expenses. One firm I worked at had a program where we could list all of the clients associated with an expense report at the beginning of a submission, and the program would automatically split up the expenses between the clients without any further calculations.
I later worked at a different firm that did not have this functionality. As a result, I needed to divide the amount of every expense by the number of clients and make an entry for each one of the clients. For instance, if I paid $1.50 on a toll, and I represented three clients at a court conference, I had to make three separate expense entries of 50 cents each. This required much more work than I was used to, since I needed to literally grab a calculator (not for the toll example though), write down all of the calculations, and input the many entries.
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I told partners at the firm that I was spending considerable time on expense entries and that another firm at which I worked had a system that made the process much easier. The partners related that they had spent substantial money on the expense reimbursement program and could not change the program or ask the vendor to add functionality. As a result, each month, many of us spent hours that could have been been used completing tasks for clients on calculations and expense entries that might have been easier if the firm used a different program or updated the existing program with better functionality.
Sometimes law firms establish procedural hurdles as well. For instance, at the beginning of my legal career, I worked at a law firm that required all phone calls, photocopies, etc. to be billed to specific clients. Before using the phone, people needed to input a long client number. Associates sometimes lost time looking up the relevant number for what was a quick phone call. In addition, attorneys would have to input a client number on a tiny screen at the copier before they could make duplicates.
At some point, the law firm decided that they would stop charging clients for local calls and print jobs under a certain number of pages. This was welcome news to associates. I am willing to bet that the increased productivity of associates more than made up for the marginal amount of expenses the firm endured by sucking up the cost of smaller copying jobs and local phone calls. This relaxed policy was also good for morale since associates hated completing tedious procedural tasks before they could complete assignments for clients.
In any case, every law firm has inefficiencies in the way they conduct business that can impact how easy it is for associates to bill hours to clients. Law firm managers should think about some impediments to efficiency in their own shops and ensure that associates can spend the most time possible billing hours and producing revenue for a firm.
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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at [email protected].