How to bill time spent researching for background / context? Forum

[s1m4]

Looking for some quick advice (FYI - I work in a small RE boutique)

There are times when I get staffed on deals / transactions containing areas of law / finance that I am very much unfamiliar with. I often spend about half an hour up to an hour reading up on these kinds of transactions as background to prepare for substantive work.

Just curious for what people do when putting together their timesheets - do you tend to bill the above to the client? Do you just bill it to "self"? Do you just completely disregard putting it into your timesheets?

Thank you guys.

[Johann]

who cares. this isnt the recession anymore. clients are scrutinizing details anymore.

[rpupkin]

Looking for some quick advice (FYI - I work in a small RE boutique)

There are times when I get staffed on deals / transactions containing areas of law / finance that I am very much unfamiliar with. I often spend about half an hour up to an hour reading up on these kinds of transactions as background to prepare for substantive work.

Just curious for what people do when putting together their timesheets - do you tend to bill the above to the client? Do you just bill it to "self"? Do you just completely disregard putting it into your timesheets?

Thank you guys.

You should ask the billing partner about this. Even within a single firm (hell, even within a single practice group), different partners will give you different answers to this question.

[Anonymous User]

I always bill the time to the matter, but don't specificially mention it in the description. The only way this doesn't make sense is if the substantive task is a .2 and you end up billing 1.2 to include your research. But honestly, when a partner asks me to do something that minor that requires that much pre-work research, that partner is inefficient and should have to write that time off. In other words, I bill everything that I do when I'm in the office to a matter (which is sometimes administrative obviously). It's up to the billing partner to write off the excess.