Law Firm Billing LOL

[janegold]

So my firm typically bills in quarter hour increments, which is AWESOME for me. But a few clients are still billed out in 6 minute/tenth of an hour increments, which is traditional.

The secretaries sitting outside my office are so confused with this concept. "Okay, why did Partner X write 0.2 for 12 minutes?? Shouldn't 0.2 be 20 minutes? I don't get it - there are six tenths in an hour."

I am trying so hard not to be nosy and remind them that there are, in fact, ten tenths in a hour.

[threejs]

lol. I am a firm administrator, and we will be in tenth of an hour increments. I have secretaries who have been here 20+ years who are still confused by this!

[janegold]

Smart Lucy!

[Deleted]

OMG re your assistants.

Good lord.

[threejs]

May 17, 2013 12:44:02 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

lmao. I made myself an excel calculator, because I have an attorney who just scribbles time in and time out. 10:30 - 12:24, etc. It's a total PITA. So I made a converter that calculates the amount of time and converts it to decimals.

This is worse than the attorneys who continue to insist on writing out there time in tiny, cramped illegible handwriting. OMG!  Excellent solution on your part, though.  Let me know if you ever want to work in a boutique D.C. firm.  lol.  I'd kill to have people come up with their own solutions like this!  

[janegold]

Thankfully they are not my assistants!

[janegold]

May 17, 2013 13:02:20 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

May 17, 2013 12:48:00 GMT -5 threejs said:

This is worse than the attorneys who continue to insist on writing out there time in tiny, cramped illegible handwriting. OMG!  Excellent solution on your part, though.  Let me know if you ever want to work in a boutique D.C. firm.  lol.  I'd kill to have people come up with their own solutions like this!  

The reason I had to create it is that my failsafe timecard calculator site went offline unexpectedly.  Do any of your people know how to Google "timecard calculator"?   lol.  Send this out:

www-dave.cs.uiuc.edu/hours.html

I'm fairly certain this - admittedly very helpful - suggestion would not be appreciated.

Good thing the vast, vast majority of our clients are billed in quarter hours! Math is hard, yo.

[threejs]

I'm fairly certain this suggestion won't be well received, but I think it's extremely helpful, so I'm sending it around. Thank you! And now I don't feel so badly for wasting time on here today -- I got something useful!

[threejs]

May 17, 2013 13:16:17 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

May 17, 2013 13:10:09 GMT -5 threejs said:

I'm fairly certain this suggestion won't be well received, but I think it's extremely helpful, so I'm sending it around. Thank you! And now I don't feel so badly for wasting time on here today -- I got something useful!

It might be.  Secretaries like it when someone makes it possible for them to do less work.  lol.

Good point!  LOL.  As a general rule, they pretty much hate everything I say. I'm actually going to share it with one of the popular ones and let her pass it around.  It'll be better received that way.  

[Deleted]

half of my clients bill in .2 and the other half in .25. thank god my secretary remembers which is which and converts for me. since i'm a dinosaur who keeps a timesheet by hand. it's a nice timesheet though, with 12 minute increments marked off so i can just draw lines.