Top Law Schools

In addition to what others have expressed above, the concept of a billing quota drives people to look for work to "do" (like gathering firewood in the cold), whereas in many other employment environments, you get projects and a set working time and get even get paid extra for overtime in some situations.

Keep in mind that many in-house departments of corporations require their attorneys to keep track of their time for internal analytical purposes.

patentlitigatrix wrote:I am one of the few weirdos that actually like the concept of the billable hour. Even though some of my matters are fixed fee or done on a contingency fee basis, I still bill my time for internal timekeeping. It provides an objective measure of my hours spent, both so I know whether or not to take on more work, take a 3 week vacation, etc., and also for bonus purposes. This goes along with why I like lock-step salaries-I don't feel like I am being cheated out of pay, and it becomes hard to do that with lock step salaries and bonuses tied to hours. (But hey, I am a female minority, so I am probably more worried about that than others.)

The disadvantage I see is that efficiency may not rewarded, and can be punished because less hours spent on good work could be viewed less favorable than more hours spent on mediocre work.

Yeah, I hate a lot of things about my job but I do not mind the billable hour. I think it forces me to be efficient actually though entering time is always a pain.

Mickfromgm wrote:Keep in mind that many in-house departments of corporations require their attorneys to keep track of their time for internal analytical purposes.

Which is stupid in my book. Fortunately, I'm in the tax department of my company (which does not require such tracking), but the law department does. The additional makework and lower morale it engenders is not offset by any marginal benefit from the analytic data. They use it so they can charge out the costs legal work internally. In theory, this allows senior management to track which projects are engendering higher legal costs, but I have a hard time believing this is meaningful intelligence in the context of overall project budgets. It's no secret which business units tend to have high legal costs.

In any event, being free from the billable hour was one of the greatest things about going in-house. I used to spend 3 hours every Saturday just doing billing stuff. Entering during the week just got too difficult with everything happening. On top of that, there was too much worry about whether I was spending too much time on a project, or not enough, or whether I was on target to meet my quota for the month or year. Now, I just get my work done.