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[baal hadad]

For the lawyers here: how many of you sucked ass at being "detail oriented" and how did you fix it. Honestly, besides the procrastination, it's this shit that gives me nightmares.

I'm like 2.5 full yrs into this lawyering thing and I've never fixed it and occasionally people get mad at me

[baal hadad]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

[masque du pantsu]

One firm I summered at supposedly required you to account for 7.5 hrs a day.

Weird. That sounds like something a firm would ask summers to do, but not actual associates. I mean, if I bill 75 hours in a week, but then leave at 3 p.m. on Friday after my filing is done, someone is going to give me shit about only accounting for 6 hours of my day on Friday? Makes no sense.

The firm I worked at would send everyone an automated email every week if they didn't enter at least 7 hours of time for every weekday. It was basically a table that showed you each day that had less than 7 hours billed.

I always just ignored those emails, and I don't think a human ever followed up on them. But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

Ok. But that's a little different than "requiring you to account for 7.5 hrs a day."

It's not as bad as it sounds. You can do that, and if you leave at three because you have no work there are any number of non-billable codes you can use to fill out the remaining hours (office admin, prof. development, etc.). I think it's just so that they can separate who is waiting for work vs. who just isn't putting in their time (bc the former would need to be staffed up, and as discussed, the latter is money left on the table). If you didn't force people to account for every day, you would never know.

[1styearlateral]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

Which method is this? Excel?

[run26.2]

my sunday sucks bc i don't have enough time in the week to finish my work

And my Monday, and my Tuesday, and my ...

[Pleasye]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

What's the method?

[baal hadad]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

What's the method?

Once I finish something I create the time entry for it immediately. If I do more work on that same matter that day I edit that same entry to reflect that.

[Lacepiece23]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

What's the method?

Once I finish something I create the time entry for it immediately. If I do more work on that same matter that day I edit that same entry to reflect that.

I do the opposite, I create the time entry in my timer before I even start the task. I do mostly task based billing with the clients that I do work for so it works way better for me. I would never be able to recreate entries at the end of the day. I'd miss so much time.

[UVAIce]

Time keeping is definitely an evil thing. When you're busy as all get out it's hard to take the ~5 minutes out of your day to write a good time entry, but it's worth it when you're not wondering WHERE IS MY TIME when you've been working 10-12 hours per day for the month and you only end up with ~160 hours.

[Pokemon]

Time keeping is definitely an evil thing. When you're busy as all get out it's hard to take the ~5 minutes out of your day to write a good time entry, but it's worth it when you're not wondering WHERE IS MY TIME when you've been working 10-12 hours per day for the month and you only end up with ~160 hours.

I keep my time on excel and rarely work on anything without first writing down the time I start on it. Last year I think I lost 100-200 hours because I would not keep good track of my time.

[Anonymous User]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

What's the method?

Once I finish something I create the time entry for it immediately. If I do more work on that same matter that day I edit that same entry to reflect that.

I do the opposite, I create the time entry in my timer before I even start the task. I do mostly task based billing with the clients that I do work for so it works way better for me. I would never be able to recreate entries at the end of the day. I'd miss so much time.

Same. When I was motivated, I used DTE's timer function. Enter the client/matter, hit the record button, then work. When I'm done with the task, I write the description, hit record again (to end the timer), open a new client/matter, and hit the record button again. Do that for a week and you get these awesome looking charts that show what you worked on when to the second. Also I notice when I do that I usually get like .3 extra at the end of the day because (1) the software rounds up (e.g., a 13 minute task becomes a .3) more than I normally would, and (2) the time it takes to enter time ends up getting billed.

When I procrastinated, I'd look through my emails an hour before our monthly time entry deadline and try to piece together what I was working on three weeks ago and for how long. I missed a ton of time doing that.

[KM2016]

But I think the firm rationalizes them because lots of attorneys don't enter time until like the last day of the month and usually when people procrastinate time entry they underestimate the time it took to do stuff (I think there is legit research to back this up). So from the firm's point of view late billers are leaving money on the table.

The partners forced me to bill as I was working throughout the day for this exact reason

One of the partners even expressly forbid me from giving notes to my secretary every day and told me to do his exact method

Actually his method worked the best and I discovered I like seeing all the billable hours I was racking up as I was racking them up

Way better than my previous procrastination method which was to stay up til 4 am 2 nights at the end of the month and enter a whole months worth of billable time in 2 days from my handwritten shitty notes

What's the method?

Once I finish something I create the time entry for it immediately. If I do more work on that same matter that day I edit that same entry to reflect that.

I do the opposite, I create the time entry in my timer before I even start the task. I do mostly task based billing with the clients that I do work for so it works way better for me. I would never be able to recreate entries at the end of the day. I'd miss so much time.

Same. When I was motivated, I used DTE's timer function. Enter the client/matter, hit the record button, then work. When I'm done with the task, I write the description, hit record again (to end the timer), open a new client/matter, and hit the record button again. Do that for a week and you get these awesome looking charts that show what you worked on when to the second. Also I notice when I do that I usually get like .3 extra at the end of the day because (1) the software rounds up (e.g., a 13 minute task becomes a .3) more than I normally would, and (2) the time it takes to enter time ends up getting billed.

When I procrastinated, I'd look through my emails an hour before our monthly time entry deadline and try to piece together what I was working on three weeks ago and for how long. I missed a ton of time doing that.

I've done it both ways. I find that I drastically underestimate my time when I'm trying to piece it together weeks later, or even at the end of the week. When I use the timer and enter the client/matter and keep it running as long as I'm working on it, I log more hours than when I try to guess-timate before the billing deadline. I also keep the timer running while I describe the work I did/create the time entry, so it all gets done at once which is nice.

[Anonymous User]

In big law can I hand write it and hand it to my secratery.