Always be padding? Forum

[Anonymous User]

For what it's worth, I've reviewed various time sheets for cases (in a practice group where the judge has to sign off on fees and so we make sure all entries are pretty detailed---guess which one lol), and the most egregious billers are partners. Not because they inflate their hours per se, but because their entries are:

3/31 Attend to matter - 10.9 hours
4/1 Attend to matter; conferences - 12.0 hours

interesting - is this bankruptcy? how detailed are associate hours in contrast to your partner examples?

because of the scrutiny, would you feel hesitant to do the “aggressive” billing tactics (eg bill waiting up late for a turn) ppl have talked about here?

The more I read in this thread, the more apparent it is that this is a practice group divide. All of my entries are much more detailed than this, and I and all of my friends have had entries sent back by our billing department, and in some cases by clients, requesting more detail. When I was a junior, one client expected us to put the batch number and document count of the documents that we reviewed in our entries (like, “Review 297 documents in Responsive Batch #67”). That client was particularly bad, but most of the stuff I’ve seen from the corporate posters in this thread would not fly in (non-bankruptcy) litigation in my firm.

[Anonymous User]

For what it's worth, I've reviewed various time sheets for cases (in a practice group where the judge has to sign off on fees and so we make sure all entries are pretty detailed---guess which one lol), and the most egregious billers are partners. Not because they inflate their hours per se, but because their entries are:

3/31 Attend to matter - 10.9 hours
4/1 Attend to matter; conferences - 12.0 hours

interesting - is this bankruptcy? how detailed are associate hours in contrast to your partner examples?

because of the scrutiny, would you feel hesitant to do the “aggressive” billing tactics (eg bill waiting up late for a turn) ppl have talked about here?

The more I read in this thread, the more apparent it is that this is a practice group divide. All of my entries are much more detailed than this, and I and all of my friends have had entries sent back by our billing department, and in some cases by clients, requesting more detail. When I was a junior, one client expected us to put the batch number and document count of the documents that we reviewed in our entries (like, “Review 297 documents in Responsive Batch #67”). That client was particularly bad, but most of the stuff I’ve seen from the corporate posters in this thread would not fly in (non-bankruptcy) litigation in my firm.

that's crazy to me as a corporate junior that just does entries like "Conducted due diligence review of supplementary diligence materials provided by Company counsel". Like...what is the client going to do, check for consistency against the data room files? seems like such a waste of time.

[Elston Gunn]

For what it's worth, I've reviewed various time sheets for cases (in a practice group where the judge has to sign off on fees and so we make sure all entries are pretty detailed---guess which one lol), and the most egregious billers are partners. Not because they inflate their hours per se, but because their entries are:

3/31 Attend to matter - 10.9 hours
4/1 Attend to matter; conferences - 12.0 hours

interesting - is this bankruptcy? how detailed are associate hours in contrast to your partner examples?

because of the scrutiny, would you feel hesitant to do the “aggressive” billing tactics (eg bill waiting up late for a turn) ppl have talked about here?

The more I read in this thread, the more apparent it is that this is a practice group divide. All of my entries are much more detailed than this, and I and all of my friends have had entries sent back by our billing department, and in some cases by clients, requesting more detail. When I was a junior, one client expected us to put the batch number and document count of the documents that we reviewed in our entries (like, “Review 297 documents in Responsive Batch #67”). That client was particularly bad, but most of the stuff I’ve seen from the corporate posters in this thread would not fly in (non-bankruptcy) litigation in my firm.

There’s a practice group divide over billing descriptions for sure, but I don’t think there’s a huge divide on what should actually be billed for. Corporate associates probably bill for just hanging around waiting for a signature page or whatever more, but other than that most of the stuff in this thread applies across groups.

[Anonymous User]

Do rx associates leave the clock on while writing these fancy narratives?

[Anonymous User]

You all seem to think that a partner can just go out and collect whatever you bill. I guess that might be true at super-in-demand firms like K&E, but most often it's not. That's one of the reasons biglaw is a difficult place to work. You have to work very efficiently, and produce high-quality work in a small number of hours. Sometimes, an associate will work efficiently and the partner still can't collect all of their time.

If you're saying you should pad your hours, only to have the partner write it off then, well, firms have technology to track how much of your hours get collected.

I don’t know, man, this sounds like the partner’s problem. Your bonus isn’t based on your hours collected. If you have a truly egregious realization rate, I guess you could lose your job, but I’ve never heard of anyone in true Biglaw getting more than a very mild talking to for it. I’ve read about it happening more at regional and midsize firms on this forum, I guess.

At a big city Biglaw firm you should bill *all* the time you’re working, and let the partner worry about writing it down.

What’s a truly egregious realization rate?

My partner f’d up a matter and had to write off like 100 hours off my time since the client said it wouldn’t pay anything. My annual realization rate was like 88% because of that. I know 80s are okay for first years, but as midlevels, should it always be in the mid-90s?

[Anonymous User]

tl dr: Partners are already trying to get as much possible for your work in legal ways, there's no need for you to pad hours

This argument makes no sense...associates at biglaw firms don't get paid based on what the firm gets paid. Their pay is tied to the hours they bill. They are incentivized to pad, especially at firms with hours minimums for bonuses. It's just that simple. I'm not saying associates should pad, but it's insane to argue that there's "no need to" just because the firm is going to get as much as possible for your work. Also, frankly, I'm not sure that's even true. If you significantly underbill then the firm very well might get less money for the matter than they would if you billed all your work (or if you padded your hours).

interesting - is this bankruptcy? how detailed are associate hours in contrast to your partner examples?

because of the scrutiny, would you feel hesitant to do the “aggressive” billing tactics (eg bill waiting up late for a turn) ppl have talked about here?

I still can't get over that people think this is even aggressive. If the client is insisting you get something done that night, and that means sitting at your desk waiting for something at 3 am, then they should pay for that. That's a significant part of the service we're providing. I just can't imagine the thought process of someone sitting at their desk at 3 am due to client demands and NOT billing for that time.

What’s a truly egregious realization rate?

My partner f’d up a matter and had to write off like 100 hours off my time since the client said it wouldn’t pay anything. My annual realization rate was like 88% because of that. I know 80s are okay for first years, but as midlevels, should it always be in the mid-90s?

Mid-90s sounds very, very high to me. I'm sure this just varies by firm and group. I know my firm pretty much assumes a certain haircut when they set the billable rates and I think somewhere in the 80s is typical for most groups, but that's my firm.

[Best]

There are too many variables to ever confirm, but i'd be curious about the numbers for cut time (either by the partner preemptively or in response to client complaint) for the super in-depth time entries versus generic block billing.

I'm very descriptive when I bill, but it may be a waste of time.

To the above poster about realization, you're fine. They'll discuss why your realization was low if it ever became an issue, and it being the partner's fault for a single matter versus it being a regular pattern of you being inefficient is more than reasonable. Mid-90s is good, but low 90s is fine in my opinion. It also depends who your clients are and what group you're in.

[Anonymous User]

I still can't get over that people think this is even aggressive. If the client is insisting you get something done that night, and that means sitting at your desk waiting for something at 3 am, then they should pay for that. That's a significant part of the service we're providing. I just can't imagine the thought process of someone sitting at their desk at 3 am due to client demands and NOT billing for that time.

I think one difference in litigation (or my experience in it anyway) is that a lot of my late nights are not *directly* client-inflicted. For example, a client may want a draft on Friday, and the partner will insist that we need to finish the internal draft Wednesday night and will expect me to stay up late on Wednesday going back and forth with them on revisions because they were busy or didn’t feel like working on it earlier in the day, and they are unwilling to just finish Thursday morning like a sane person would. I take the point that at the end of the day I’m still staying up late for a work-related reason that is out of my control and so I should be able to bill for it, but I think it’s a little murkier than a situation where the deal is signing the next morning and the client expects everyone to stay up all night to get it done.

[NoLongerALurker]

Re entry detail -- and obviously not Rx -- in my experience usually the only time I have to put something very specific is if I'm never talking to the client. Like I get pulled in on a random one off and then I need to bill like "researched matters related to recent SEC guidance and impact on offering document" or something. If you're actually the person the client is talking to regularly and your name is popping up in their inbox for every distribution, you have much more wiggle room to get away with "attention to matter" (not quite that vague, but honestly, almost that vague) sort of boomer partner generalities.

[Buglaw]

Realization is wildly practice group and deal dependent. For example, lev fin can result in a low realization. It's extremely common if commitment papers don't hit that little to none of the lenders side time gets collected. If you are churning a ton of commitment papers, that can result in low utilization. I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for low collection for that.

I'm currently on an M&A deal that I've billed about 400 hours to that might die and I suspect we won't get paid if it does (at least not for a very long time). My collection is going to be very bad if that's the case for this year and last year. No one is going to blame me for that or talk to me about efficiency.

If you are working for clients who pay bills and they just don't want to pay yours, that's a problem. But, if you have that problem, partners will tell you you need to work on your efficiency. Essentially, don't worry about this unless someone says something to you. There are a ton of totally legitimate reasons your collections could be low none of which are your problem.

Finally, the idea that you shouldn't bill time for waiting around for closing deliverables because it will result in better collections is generally false. 5-10K on a million dollar legal bill just doesn't mean anything. Being super responsive and deliver a smooth closing results in happy clients. Happy clients pay bills. A client would much rather get great service with a $1 mil legal bill, than wonder where people are around closing with a $990K legal bill. Which, is why they ask you to be constantly available at closing and why they are OK paying for it. I've never heard about anyone complaining about time for attending to closing.

[Best]

With everything said in here, I feel for those who work with insurance companies or on matters that are covered by insurance. I've only ever done a single matter (voluntereed to help on something outside my group), and I can't imagine having my bills regularly scrutinized like that.

[ConfusedNYer]

RE: padding and realization rates. As someone who worked on reviewing law firm bills prior to law school (in the regulatory/lit context, so not applicable to corporate) detailed descriptions matter at lot more for realization rate than any perceived billing. For example, if you were researching case law for a request from us and you broke down each piece of research into chunks like "2 hours researching personal jurisdiction law in X district" "2 hours researching standard for y in z jurisdiction" etc., but you let your timer run through small breaks throughout that research your time probably was not going to be cut, but if you just sent a block bill of "10 hours doing research for X task" and that 10 hours was strictly timed, the big block description was way more likely to be cut down to 8 hours because "that seems like a lot of research time" than if it was 5 chunks of discrete research.

Other things also just mattered a lot more in general, like a senior associate being billed for work that was perceived as "junior work." You saved a lot more money pushing back on those issues then giving haircuts to individual billing entries.

Which is to say padding and realization are not always really related that much.

[motojir]

tl dr: Partners are already trying to get as much possible for your work in legal ways, there's no need for you to pad hours

This argument makes no sense...associates at biglaw firms don't get paid based on what the firm gets paid. Their pay is tied to the hours they bill. They are incentivized to pad, especially at firms with hours minimums for bonuses. It's just that simple. I'm not saying associates should pad, but it's insane to argue that there's "no need to" just because the firm is going to get as much as possible for your work.

OK. I guess that for some people, it's insane to bill your 2000 hours honestly, instead of doing so by padding your hours (i.e. committing federal mail fraud in addition to various other crimes.) To each his own.

[motojir]

RE: padding and realization rates. As someone who worked on reviewing law firm bills prior to law school (in the regulatory/lit context, so not applicable to corporate) detailed descriptions matter at lot more for realization rate than any perceived billing. For example, if you were researching case law for a request from us and you broke down each piece of research into chunks like "2 hours researching personal jurisdiction law in X district" "2 hours researching standard for y in z jurisdiction" etc., but you let your timer run through small breaks throughout that research your time probably was not going to be cut, but if you just sent a block bill of "10 hours doing research for X task" and that 10 hours was strictly timed, the big block description was way more likely to be cut down to 8 hours because "that seems like a lot of research time" than if it was 5 chunks of discrete research.

Other things also just mattered a lot more in general, like a senior associate being billed for work that was perceived as "junior work." You saved a lot more money pushing back on those issues then giving haircuts to individual billing entries.

Which is to say padding and realization are not always really related that much.

Your contributions are probably valuable to this thread, if you have more. Like, what sort of industry were you in? (Bank?) What sort of firms did you hire? (Cadwalader types?) My wild guesses are in parentheses.

Also, I'm surprised anyone block billed to your client, since clients like you spell those rules out clearly from the start and the partners make sure associates know them.

[nixy]

tl dr: Partners are already trying to get as much possible for your work in legal ways, there's no need for you to pad hours

This argument makes no sense...associates at biglaw firms don't get paid based on what the firm gets paid. Their pay is tied to the hours they bill. They are incentivized to pad, especially at firms with hours minimums for bonuses. It's just that simple. I'm not saying associates should pad, but it's insane to argue that there's "no need to" just because the firm is going to get as much as possible for your work.

OK. I guess that for some people, it's insane to bill your 2000 hours honestly, instead of doing so by padding your hours (i.e. committing federal mail fraud in addition to various other crimes.) To each his own.

No one is saying it’s insane to bill your hours honestly, just that the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time. It’s not eat what you kill; biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill. What constitutes padding and what’s fair billing can be debated, but whether you do it or not has nothing to do with how hard partners work to get the most payment from clients.

[Anonymous User]

Your contributions are probably valuable to this thread, if you have more. Like, what sort of industry were you in? (Bank?) What sort of firms did you hire? (Cadwalader types?) My wild guesses are in parentheses.

Not OP, but most U.S. bank clients at my V5 seemed to have staff that were specifically (ed: “significantly” is probably more accurate) dedicated to going through the bills and looking for entries to reject. It wasn’t particularly uncommon to get an email asking you to provide more detail about an entry you submitted 6 months ago because the client had kicked it back. We would also get questions about entries that looked like potential duplicates (leading to the instruction to vary the words that we used to describe common tasks), entries for meetings or calls that didn’t match up with the entries of the other participants, etc.

Also, on the block billing aspect, the problem is that some tasks really are just one task that takes numerous hours. You can break it down more but then the descriptions get absurd. However, as OP said, it seems clear that they’d rather have ridiculously granular entries, even it sometimes costs them more because all of the separate entries round up.

[motojir]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

[Anonymous User]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

Lmao what even is this post. Associates at firms with billable requirements are literally paid by billed time, not realized time. So you're absolutely wrong.

You're not "gaming" biglaw by padding your bill. You're making biglaw more money. There are clients who will hawk over and try to cut down legal bills, but they'll do the same for "unpadded" bills too. All other things held equal, I doubt there's a significant difference between realization rates for a reasonable padder vs. one of the sad souls on this thread who don't bill the time they're staying up past 10pm to get a document in the dead of the night.

[Elston Gunn]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

What is the basis for all of your claims, other than having recently watched The Firm?

[Anonymous User]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

Honestly, there's a part of me that thinks a substantial percentage of biglaw partners probably don't care if an associate pads in a way that's nigh undetectable. Just more money into their pockets.

[motojir]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

Lmao what even is this post. Associates at firms with billable requirements are literally paid by billed time, not realized time. So you're absolutely wrong.

You're not "gaming" biglaw by padding your bill. You're making biglaw more money. There are clients who will hawk over and try to cut down legal bills, but they'll do the same for "unpadded" bills too. All other things held equal, I doubt there's a significant difference between realization rates for a reasonable padder vs. one of the sad souls on this thread who don't bill the time they're staying up past 10pm to get a document in the dead of the night.

I know of an associate who billed 3,000 hours, and who was let go before bonuses were paid specifically because the firm didn't want her to get a bonus. I'm not accusing them of padding hours, but I suspect the firm looked at the hours collected for this person, not the hours they billed, and made a decision accordingly.

Also, LOL just LOL at the level of criminal sophistication on TLS. If you're going to steal then do it in a creative way, not by billing for time you didn't work. Some serious low life dumbasses on this board.

[Anonymous User]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

Its hard to overstate how wrong the bolded is. To an associate, the number of hours billed is far more important than the realization rate, because an associate's bonus (and general standing in the firm) is tied to hours billed. Only if an associate's realization rate is particularly low will it become a problem for the associate, but even then, firms typically hold low realization rates against the partner who's writing off the time.

And quit it with the "federal crime" talk. If you read the thread, most of the practices being referred to as "padding" are just meant to counteract under-billing for time actually spent on matters (the consensus seems to be that straight up adding hours that weren't actually worked is sketchy and less common than the other practices being discussed, e.g., rounding up to account for time not otherwise accounted for in checking/responding to emails, or billing for time that you were required to be at your desk at 2AM).

[nixy]

the incentives to pad are unrelated to how much partners collect on their time . . . biglaw associate pay isn’t dependent on how much the firm collects, but on many hours they bill.

No. Firms have technology to track your realization rates, which is far more important than the number of hours you bill. Biglaw management is quite sophisticated, you can't game them by simply padding your hours, setting aside the fact that padding your bill is a federal crime. Nice try.

What? You have a set salary, and your bonus is based on hours billed, not hours realized. Also...federal crime???

[motojir]

I'm bowing out. This one of the shadiest and stupidest discussions I've ever had. Enjoy the rest of the thread.

[lolwutpar]

I'm bowing out. This one of the shadiest and stupidest discussions I've ever had. Enjoy the rest of the thread.

lol, keeps posting a classic bad TLS take about "federal crimes" then bows out when people point out what a stupid statement that is.