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the information provided here is not legal advice and does not purport to be a substitute for advice of counsel on any specific matter for legal advice you should always consult with an attorney concerning your specific situation to associate drive today we're going to be talking about one of the toughest parts about being an associate at a private law firm billing hours billable hours of the lifeblood of a law firm as a result are the lifeblood of a law firm associate but most associates give very little if any training on exactly how to build their hours and if you're like most associates the way that you learn is that you go about doing it for a while and then at some point a partner sends a frustrated email or you get a frustrate a telephone call saying that you've been doing it wrong this entire time so we're going to try to jump out in front of those awkward telephone calls and emails and get to exactly how to bill your time and more importantly when to bill your time okay so how to go about billing your time associates have different ways that they do this some keep it in a handwritten pad next to their desk some put their time in an Excel spreadsheet but what I would recommend doing above all is going ahead and putting your time directly into the computer software program that your firm uses that's the one with the client matter number box the box for your description and that critical start/stop button and the reason I recommend doing this is because it takes the least mental energy pebble to remember to do it to actually do it which means you're going to be much more likely to actually use it and use it all the time if you put your time in any other medium outside that computer software program at the end of the month you are going to have to transfer it back in and even if you were not the one doing it if you're getting your assistant to help you with that that still creates the possibility for human error and it just isn't necessary you can cut out that middleman step by just going ahead and billing your time directly into that computer software program so I highly recommend using that tool a few more important things to keep in mind make sure you are billing your time every day and make sure you're putting any time description every day now the billing your time is very important because associates generally tend to underestimate how long they've spent on something if they're trying to remember it in the past and so if you are waiting till the end of the week or even we're the end of the month to try to go back and put in how many hours you spent on something you're generally going to be selling yourself short and you're not going to be getting that 100% of the billable hours you spent on a particular project as far as the time descriptions go you don't need to put in a full description every single day I know that takes a lot of time something better to do is just put in a few keywords so that you can remind yourself what it is you worked on so at the end of the week or at the end of the month when you're doing your full-time descriptions you have that to fall back on what usually tends to happen is if you don't put anything in the boxes you are going to be forcing yourself to remember what you did it on a particular day and that can cause some embarrassing and potentially harmful mistakes so for example if you are trying to remember what day you had a call with the client or a call with opposing counsel it could have been on a different day than what you remembered you might put research and draft a brief on something that's been filed with the court the day before those type of things so do yourself a favor put that time in every day put those keywords description every day and you will be so doing yourself a huge favor by the end of the month another thing to keep in mind that you should be doing before you start billing on a matter is ask the managing partner or the senior associate managing the case if the client has any specific billing requirements a lot of times if a client is new to the firm new the particular partner or it's the beginning of a case they're going to be a lot more stringent on those billing requirements or those billing descriptions then they would be for example if it's halfway through the case and that client trust relationship has already been built or if the client has worked with a partner the firm for quite a while they may be a little more lacs than what you can put in your time description so just good to know that upfront and to know the type of client you're working with another good thing to definitely know about a client is if they're good and okay with you billing in blocks or in chunks which means for example if you build ten hours a day for a particular client and you work on three or four different projects if you can put that all in one chunk of time or if the client wants you to break out each individual project you're working on and assign a specific amount of time for that project so very good to know that upfront because if not if you find that out after the fact you're going to have to be going back breaking out your projects and basically guessing at that point how long you spent on each one which is not so good to get that client specific information upfront save you a lot of time on the back end the last thing to mention was respect to how to build your time is specifically how to go about writing time descriptions and most firms will have guidelines about this they'll talk about what it is they want you to do but if your firm doesn't have guidelines or if you're just looking for a few pointers you can adopt these the first one is to always start your time description with an active verb so for example research statute-of-limitations participate in team conference call draft motions dismiss those type of things the second thing to keep in mind is that if you're meeting with somebody in particular or your project has to do with somebody in particular use that proper noun and use it as a first initial last name so for example participate in client call with a anderson or meet with expert or james to discuss project that way the third thing to keep in mind is never use abbreviations because even though they may become second nature to you generally speaking they're not second nature to the client and they may cause follow-up questions or confusion with the client and that's something you want to try to avoid so instead of for example writing drafts draw responses to neat DCO deadlines write draft interrogatory responses to me Duquette control order deadlines and lastly make sure you're always writing why you're doing something so at that second clause in there it doesn't take a lot of time it goes a long way so for example instead of research statute of limitations you might put research statute of limitations for responding to motion to dismiss that type of thing so I hope these tips were helpful and they will go a long way trust me for the client and your billing partner will be very appreciative so use those whenever you are drafting your time descriptions now let's talk about the second bigger question which is when to bill your time and this is a little trickier because there are no formal rules and guidelines about how to do this most of the time you just have to rely on your best judgment which can be really tricky if you've never done this before if you're just starting out you really have nothing to compare it to but just keep in mind that it's completely normal to be very neurotic about it upfront it will get easier over time you will start settling it into a routine as you work on your projects and also keep in mind that for those of us who have worked in law firms for years it can still be tricky because there is a lot of gray area and there are a lot of different situations and scenarios that come up so today we're going to be talking about a few of the more common scenarios and hopefully that will give you some perspective on how to bill hours in your own practice first of all the content anything that it takes you to start up a case or account or get up to speed on a case or account absolutely billable time if you are doing background research if you are doing a fact checking if you are reading documents reading case law googling information that's relevant looking at prior projects on that case asking questions of other associates and other partners all of that is absolutely billable never feel like you have to eat time because you're new on a case you're getting up to speed on something absolutely not if you are looking into that case if you are doing things related to that case that is 100% billable time that can be anything from getting to know the facts the players the conflict the agreement where you guys stand where you need to go all of that 100% billable make sure you're billing for it now let's look at when to press start and when to press stop on the billable hour timer and I find it helpful to sort of break this up into two categories and in the first category we're going to be talking about short brain breaks that are necessary to reset and recharge so that you can pull those long hours and still provide high quality work product and in the second category are long uninterrupted non-work-related events that you should definitely be pressing stop on your timer for so let's look at a few examples to get a feel for the two categories in the first category the short brain breaks things that fall into that category where you are not present stop on the timer include things like checking facebook grabbing a cup of coffee watching this short YouTube video chatting with your next-door work partner writing a text to a friend or significant other for plans about that night something short something that's necessary to pull your mind away from work for a few minutes and get back in there and to pull those long hours that you need to pull and the second category are things like leaving in the afternoon to go run errands going to a doctor's appointment taking a 45-minute call with your insurance carrier taking a long lunch those type of things not gonna be billable you're gonna press stop on the timer for those something else that falls in the category over here are things that are lawfirm related but not related to the client matter you're working on so things like lawfirm related meetings summer associate happy hours your evaluation at the end of the year that type of thing is also going to be a long uninterrupted break that you're not gonna be feeling billing the client for so keep that in mind those two categories when you're trying to decide when to press start and when to press stop on that billable hour timer another helpful way that it was described to me one time is that if it is work-related and is keeping you from being at home you can absolutely bill for it and a really good example of this is it's 10:00 p.m. on a Friday you're at work you just sent a draft out to a partner or a client you're waiting for a red line at its back and you are not actually doing any work at the moment but you have to be there it's work-related and it's keeping you from being at home absolutely you can bill for that time another really good example is you're in court you're waiting for your hearing to begin it's running an hour late or two hours late you're not doing anything work at the moment but you have to be there it's work-related and it's keeping you from being at home absolutely 100% you can bill for that time now something we will talk about that is a bit of a caveat to that which is a beast in and of itself is the issue of travel now travel is a bit of its own animal only because most clients already have rules and restrictions in place as to what you can bill for travel and what you can't so check with your partner senior associate running the case as to what those rules are if there are no client specific rules in place and they just tell you to use your best judgment here is that rule of thumb that you should be following never bill purely for travel that means never put on your time description sheet travel to deposition or travel to pre-trial conference or travel to client office don't put that you can't build for that but you absolutely can and absolutely should bill for work while you are traveling related to the case so if you are flying to is that the deposition and you're viewing your notes your outline thinking through in your head how you're gonna approach the witness absolutely bill for that time if you are travelling to a client meeting or traveling to a pre-trial conference take over in your head the points are gonna be making think over the arguments the strategy the approach you're gonna be taking all of that is absolutely billable time and you actually should be doing it so that you can build for that travel time so that you're not just burning hours upon hours traveling from one work-related place to another so that's how you approach travel as a general matter make sure you're checking on the travel specific requirements because some clients actually do allow for travel especially if it's international so check on that and if not use this rule of thumb while you are traveling another thing to mention with respect to billing time is make sure you're billing for a hundred percent of the time that you are working that means that you should bill for 100% of the time you're taking on any particular project and I know this is gonna fall on deaf ears especially for a few of the associates that are just starting out or just lateral to a new firm and I understand the feeling that you are afraid that you're taking too long or you're afraid you're gonna be called out for not doing work properly but the truth of the matter is that there's a huge learning curve with this career and every time you start a project for the first time and even the second and third time it's going to take you a long time that's completely natural it happens to everyone there's no way that you can know how to do something and do something quickly when you've never done it before or only a few times so it's going to take you a long time that is completely natural and expected make sure you are billing a hundred percent of the time you are taking and if you don't if you tried to self-censor and shades off some of those hours you're actually hurting yourself in a few ways one the partner could see how long you're taking and what your billables are for that month and try to give you more work expecting that you have more time on your hands when in fact you don't but more commonly than that is that the amount of time you spend on a project is perfectly acceptable especially for wherever you are in that year because that's reflected in your billing rate to the client and by not reporting those hours the firm can't build the client for those hours and the firm can't recoup that income so you're actually doing a disservice of the firm a disservice to yourself more importantly so make sure you were billing 100% of the time you were taking so that you get a hundred percent of that credit one final thought I want to leave you guys with in terms of how to go about billing and it's this as we've all experienced in our practices there's a lot of gray area in terms of billing hours and undoubtedly some associates employ different billing practices than what I've talked about in this video but one important thing I think to keep in mind is that so much of what Loring is is the creative thought process and that's creatively thinking how to solve a problem how to look at an issue from a different angle how to turn a weakness into a strength and while a lot of that creative thought process happens at work a lot of it happens outside of work while you're driving home while you're cooking dinner in those moments before you fall asleep and none of that time is build and so rather than worrying at work about nickel-and-diming yourself for minutes that you're spending working on a case and whether or not those can fairly be billable I would encourage you to instead focus on the work itself so try to focus on that and be confident in the fact that any of the moments that you're not sure whether they should have been billable or not are gonna be more than balanced out by the moments spent thinking about the case or problem outside of the office so I hope that gives you a little bit of encouragement I'll put your mind at ease a little bit you do have that safety net so keep that in mind bill your hours give yourself a hundred percent credit for the work that you're doing I hope this video was helpful if you have any comments questions or war stories as usual leave them in the comment section below if you would like to get a notification every time we release a new video click on the subscribe button and I hope to see you in the next one [Music] you