So you’ve landed a job at a private law firm. Whether it’s your first job out of law school or you’ve made the move from a clerkship or other public position, getting into private practice is an adjustment and, well, takes some “practice.” Perhaps the biggest change as a new private attorney is adapting to “billable hours”—the metric by which most private attorneys are compensated and their performance is measured. Unless you are at a firm that only handles matters on a flat-fee or contingent fee basis, you will invariably need to adjust to the billable hour. Even if you are at a firm that does primarily flat-fee or contingent fee work, you will still, most likely, need to record the time spent on each matter, which means you’ll still live your professional life in six-minute increments. This article offers some pointers for new attorneys adjusting to this type of work and finding success in the early parts of their careers.
Tracking Your Billable Progress
One phrase you’ll hear a lot from your new colleagues is “meeting your hours,” this refers to satisfying your firm’s billable hour requirement. Some firms have a monthly requirement while other firms have a yearly requirement. Often, the billable hour requirement is considered for compensation and advancement. You want to make sure that you are meeting this requirement, or at least making an effort to meet the requirement. While at first blush, billing 2,000 hours (or more) a year can seem intimidating, when that figure is broken up by month, week, or day, it starts to appear far more manageable. If you have a yearly requirement, a good place to start is dividing the requirement by 12, which will give you an idea of how many hours you will need each month. You can also divide this number by the number of working weeks in the year. I say “working week” because there’s a handful of holidays that practically all attorneys have off, so while there are 52 weeks in a year, you still need to factor in holidays and any vacation time. Accordingly, dividing your yearly billable hour requirement by 50 will give you a better picture of how many hours you will need to bill per week.
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