More Billable hours/Working Hours Myths

With continuing pressure on law firm profitability, exacerbated by the GFC, there’s plenty of discussion of lawyer productivity.

Despite the volume of talk, productivity in this context is by no means a simple concept, and perhaps this is behind the tendency for the discussion in law firms to far too often reduce itself to a discussion about billing levels and very little more.

I started a discussion on my LinkedIn discussion group last week about perceived stress in employed lawyers. Excellent Management

During the week I had cause to again read a publication available from NSW Young Lawyers, “How To Survive and Thrive in Your First Year of Law”, and while there is plenty of good material in it, I noted a couple of points that seemed unreasonably out of touch in 2013, and perhaps adding to the stress of some!

The authors opined that, “You should be prepared to work up to 60 hours a week as a lawyer in private practice”, and, “To achieve a billable target of seven hours it is likely that you will be in the office for about nine or ten hours a day”.

By comparison, in fact in the current environment the vast majority of WorkPlans I prepare for young employed lawyers involve weekly work hours of less than 40. Today I attached a draft WorkPlan to a Contract of Employment for a Senior Associate in a small firm with minimum hours of 37.5/week.

Individual expectations by me of their investment in FirmTime vary enormously.

However if an individual lawyer with an 8-hour a day requirement, net of all breaks, had a WorkPlan FirmTime allocation of 1 hour a day, and consequently a ClientTime allocation of 7 hours a day, I would expect that work on client files to be done for 7 hours a day on average.

The total amount of time worked for the firm, whether in the office, in Court, at clients’ premises, working from home or elsewhere, would be 8 hours, and not some exorbitant higher number like the, “9 or 10”, in the Young Lawyers’ publication.

It seems to me that if we are serious about ensuring unreasonable stress does not run riot in our employed lawyers we need to do a lot more than trot out time-worn myths.

We need to be clear about our expectations, provide enough work, and provide good training in improving their efficiency and “productivity”. We also need to give regular quality feedback.

In my experience employed lawyers benefiting from this approach tend to be light years ahead of their less fortunate peers in real productivity, and as a result tend to progress more quickly in their careers and in remuneration growth.