s/o Billing 101

[kadams767]

And, go...

Seriously, I would love for more senior attorneys to list any and all billing tips, reminders, anything that helps increase hours. I feel like I am shortchanging myself or not billing for things that I should be or could be billing.

[Deleted]

Flagging to read later. This is an admitted weak spot for me. Part of my problem is feeling the need to self edit, which I know I need to break.

[Deleted]

I also billed .2 during my commute because I'm stressing over a brief and I spent the majority of my drive thinking about where to go next. That was easy.

[Susie]

I don't think I have any tips that aren't obvious, but:
- enter time every day, as you do it. Yes it's annoying. But yes, it helps.
- never round anything down or cut it. That is the partner's job. (I struggle with this on clients that are "mine.")
- free initial consultations are great, but keep it to a half hour. (This is one I sometimes struggle with, because new small entity clients need so much explanation and hand holding, just to determine whether they should engage us.)
- Bill for those emails!

[Deleted]

Cosmos - do you know how the partners would bill it, each email separately or lump it as one line item? If excessive I could see someone getting possibly reamed out in fee arb over something like that depending upon the complaints raised and the panel assigned.

[Deleted]

As I said offline, definitely not standard at my firms. We can round 2.5 minutes up to a .1. So if I spend 2.5 minutes on something, it can be a .1. If I spend 6 minutes on something, .1. If I spend 8 minutes on something, .1. If I spend 10 minutes on something, .2.

If I read 6 emails for 6 clients and it takes me 4 minutes to read each, I could bill 6 .1s for that. If it takes me 24 minutes to read 6 emails for one client, that is .4.

Most of my clients lately allow block billing, so I just bill a total for them each day, and so individual increments on emails or whatever would get lost anyway -- if I work for 4.3 hours on their stuff, I bill 4.3 hours. The only time this would be an issue is when the only thing I do for that client that day is read and maybe respond to emails, which is usually only on weekends.

[Deleted]

deleted my prior comment. I'm going to do some digging in my spare time- aka not now.

I mostly do block billing as well, since the majority of what I work on consists of brief writing, legal research, or discovery. I do get a lot of emails but often I'll get one while I'm working on something else for the client and use them for whatever project I'm working on.

[kadams767]

Jan 9, 2013 9:54:41 GMT -5 v said:

As I said offline, definitely not standard at my firms. We can round 2.5 minutes up to a .1. So if I spend 2.5 minutes on something, it can be a .1. If I spend 6 minutes on something, .1. If I spend 8 minutes on something, .1. If I spend 10 minutes on something, .2.

If I read 6 emails for 6 clients and it takes me 4 minutes to read each, I could bill 6 .1s for that. If it takes me 24 minutes to read 6 emails for one client, that is .4.

Most of my clients lately allow block billing, so I just bill a total for them each day, and so individual increments on emails or whatever would get lost anyway -- if I work for 4.3 hours on their stuff, I bill 4.3 hours. The only time this would be an issue is when the only thing I do for that client that day is read and maybe respond to emails, which is usually only on weekends.

This is how I bill also. I am thankful that most of my clients are block-billed and my hours are mostly an internal thing here. But I want to bust my hump to up my hours this year and hopefully get a better raise/bonus.

But no, I would not do 6 tasks for one client in a day, each taking 2 minutes and bill them .6 anyhow. I admittedly do not know the ethics behind this, but I would not do that.

[Deleted]

Jan 9, 2013 10:01:14 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

This is how I bill also. I am thankful that most of my clients are block-billed and my hours are mostly an internal thing here. But I want to bust my hump to up my hours this year and hopefully get a better raise/bonus.

But no, I would not do 6 tasks for one client in a day, each taking 2 minutes and bill them .6 anyhow. I admittedly do not know the ethics behind this, but I would not do that.

I have some task-based billing clients and first of all, they're a major PITA. And sometimes I do have 6 things in a day, but that's because things like emails, phone calls, research, drafting briefs, drafting letters, etc. need to be separated out. I don't separate each email out though -- if I took 18 minutes reading 10 emails throughout the day, that's .3 for the day. And if I round up one task, I may round down another to get to the right amount of time that I spent that day on the client. They tend to be the clients that are most particular about their bills anyway, so if the bills became excessive because of rounding up every task, there would be a huge issue.

[Deleted]

The majority of my clients are government municipalities and they (usually) dont care how we bill- no task codes or anything. The issue is when we have an insurance carrier paying the bills. And some private clients care, but the majority are small companies that don't.

I've been much better this week with my time. I've been using the clock in my billing program (helpful for switching back and forth to MM, hahaha) and I've been entering my time daily.

[thedutchgirl]

Do not cut your own time unless you are a partner. Do not cut your time! If you are junior and really have a concern about the time you spent on something, ask the partner how much he or she thinks the project should take. (Frankly, you should ask at the outset how much time the partner or senior associate wants you to spend on something.)

If you have electronic timers, USE them. It makes it so much easier to bill for things like email and avoid over or under estimating the amount of time you took to do something. My firm rounds up all increments, but this allows capture of something that took 18 minutes and 2 seconds plus something that took 4 minutes to become .4.

Close time daily. And if you don't, at least lose the electronic timers so you aren't losing time. Studies show that recreating your time later leads to something like 30% lost time. Closing daily allows you to look at how much you billed in a day, versus how much time you spent in the office, so as to determine if you've missed anything.

[thedutchgirl]

Oh. I have some clients I may block bill for, but I still need to provide some breakdown. So I will track what I do during the day so as to be able to write something like Research and draft summary judgment brief (4.7); emails with J. Smith regarding strategy for same (.3); call with opposing counsel regarding scheduling hearing on same (.2).

For task-billing clients, I have multiple timers set up so that I don't have to go back and break up the time later.

[otowngirl]

How much do y'all think angryharpy is LOL'ing at this thread and shaking her head at us poor billing schmucks.

[Deleted]

Best advice ever-- stop going on GBCN every 5 minutes

[thedutchgirl]

I will note that the double billing described above is absolutely forbidden at my firm. My understanding is some practices--insurance defense comes to mind--permit this. It is considered unethical in my practice. I would not do it without specific authorization to do so.

[ESF]

Jan 10, 2013 10:20:11 GMT -5 melmaria said:

Jan 9, 2013 22:48:33 GMT -5 thedutchgirl said:

I will note that the double billing described above is absolutely forbidden at my firm. My understanding is some practices--insurance defense comes to mind--permit this. It is considered unethical in my practice. I would not do it without specific authorization to do so.

I was surprised by that as well. I would never be able to double bill in that circumstance (or any circumstance), and I didn't know some practices allowed it.

My understanding is that most state bars don't even allow it.

[Deleted]

Jan 10, 2013 10:47:15 GMT -5 @mavjen said:

Okay, before I get called in by my state's disciplinary board, I'm talking about quick/skimming stuff. Like checking if my very preliminary research applies, or going through mail, or reading an email during the call. I wasn't conducting a depo or drafting a complex doc during a conference call. I guess I've watched senior people do this at different firms when I had to be in their office during long calls (like 2+ hours long). But, I can see where dutchgirl and melmaria are coming from with the ethics concerns. If I ever bill my time again (god, I hope not), I will not multi-task and multi-bill.

My understanding of the RPCs is that it doesn't matter. The ethics rules do not allow for multitask billing. I.e. you travel for client A and work on client B during the flight, you can't bill client A for the travel time and client B for the work performed - it's one or the other.