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Started working for a firm a couple weeks ago as an intern. I'm a 2L. The firm is having me Bill my time. I'm working hourly for the school year and then get paid at market over the summer. As I was going through my hourly time sheet vs. My billed time, I noticed I am billing about 3/4 of my time. I can't tell if that is high or low. I'm literelly just doing r&w. I couple memo's and a brief. I've been using a timer for when I'm actually working (not simply familiarizing myself with the topic). Should I be putting down the time I'm familiarizing myself with the topic? I'm completely ignorant with billing. I just don't want to look like an idiot with my supervising partner.

Yes, review counts as well. If you're touching a matter in some way, bill it and let your supervisor decide what to cut. Just describe it well enough so they know what you did.

Agreed you should bill everything, but 75% also doesn't seem ridiculously low. The billable hour makes you realize just how much time you spend at work not working.

I'm a big fan of this Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... urce=gmail

Bill everything and break it down by what you're doing. Print it at the end of the day and then organizing your billing at the end of the day/week will be easy.

Yeah, definitely bill for any minute you're thinking/working on something. It's normal at first to be hesitant about billing time, but don't be. The billing attorney will decide if/when to cut time. As a partner at my old firm once told me, "I've never heard anyone complain about a law clerk or an associate spending too much time on something, but I've heard people wonder aloud what a person is doing all day when they're in the office for 10 hours but only bill 6".

Takes a little while to get used to. But everything everyone has said is on point. I was always hesitant about billing a 3 minute e-mail or quick phone call. Then, as everyone has pointed out, you realize that the billing partner takes care of filtering non-chargeable work. So just bill it all and let him/her figure it out.

Thanks AV for that Chrome extension. Going to start using that; we have a stop watch in our billing software but it's insanely inconvenient to use.