It was the mid-1960s and associates at Alston, Miller & Gaines were upset about a rumor floating around their tony offices that a clerk was adding up the hours each attorney worked—a new concept called “billable hours.”

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“Philip Alston asked some of the associates to meet with him at his home for a general morale building sort of thing,” recalls attorney Michael Trotter, now at Taylor English. “Several attorneys had gotten wind of this individual billing thing and objected. Not only did Philip explain about billable hours, but he said the firm had established a rule that they would not look at the hours of individual attorneys.”

And they didn't. Trotter, who was head of the corporate department, received a monthly list of his department's billable hours with no names attached. “I could pretty much figure out who billed 100 hours and who did 200. But that was still going on in 1977 when I left. It's so very different from this world of law today and profits.”