Record All Time vs Self Write-Down Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm a 2019 grad who is two months into my regional biglaw job. When I first started everyone (partners and associates) vehemently told me "record all your time," "it's expected that you'll be very inefficient," and "never write-down your own time."

Well, here I am two months later, and several partners have questioned why I took so much time on an assignment, saying things like "that shouldn't have taken X hours," or "we can't bill clients Y hours for this kind of project."

So, I guess my question is: should I listen to conventional wisdom, record all my time, and just deal with any criticism I receive for my inefficiency? Or, should I write down my own time to (hopefully) prevent a poor reputation from developing?

[dvlthndr]

It might be a firm culture thing, but my advice is to record everything. It's your job to record your time, and it's the partner's job to write down the time if necessary. Partners may not like doing it for a variety of reasons (e.g., it takes effort on their part, and they might get dinged by the firm for writing down too much time and making inefficient use of the associates). But it's really not your problem to fix.

Don't worry about the criticism. Just try to be proactive and learn from your mistakes. If it starts to become an issue, a good practice is to ask about the budget/time to be spent on a given project. This shows that you are thinking about it, and it will give you a sense for what the expectations are.

[burritotaco]

Bill for every single conceivable thing you ethically can. If it’s a problem, it’s the partner’s problem. And it’s often impossible to tell in advance whether you spent too much time on something. Billing is so subjective and so contingent on several factors that you should not worry about criticism, unless it’s a constant issue with multiple partners and multiple tasks. If that’s the case, then you may need to figure out how to be more efficient.

[notinbiglaw]

You have to write down your time. If you start making a habit of writing down, for example, 20% of your time, 2000 billable hours becomes 2500 billable hours.

Only time I’d voluntarily write down my time is when I knew I probably jumped down a rabbit hole and I knew it probably would be a rabbit hole before hand but did it anyway because I had nothing better to do.

[papermateflair]

Agree with everyone here - do not cut your time, record it all. If you cut your time, partners can't know how much time you *actually* spent, and they can't give you guidance on how to improve. If they think it's a 2 hour project and you take 4 hours, they need to help you get to a point where you can do it in 2, OR they need to readjust their expectations. When you cut your own hours you aren't providing them with full information. You're a brand new associate, there will be a learning curve, and you'll probably have a few conversations like this along the way, and the solution is to improve where you can, NOT cut your hours down so it looks like you've improved when you actually haven't.

[Anonymous User]

Biglaw partner here - I also tell my associates to bill all their time - but I always end up noticing those associates who bill way too much considering the amount and quality of work they produce. It makes me suspect they are stupid or dishonest or both. Just some food for thought.

[notinbiglaw]

You have to write down your time. If you start making a habit of writing down, for example, 20% of your time, 2000 billable hours becomes 2500 billable hours.

Only time I’d voluntarily write down my time is when I knew I probably jumped down a rabbit hole and I knew it probably would be a rabbit hole before hand but did it anyway because I had nothing better to do.

Sorry I obviously meant you have to record.

[The Lsat Airbender]

You have to write down your time. If you start making a habit of writing down, for example, 20% of your time, 2000 billable hours becomes 2500 billable hours.

Only time I’d voluntarily write down my time is when I knew I probably jumped down a rabbit hole and I knew it probably would be a rabbit hole before hand but did it anyway because I had nothing better to do.

Sorry I obviously meant you have to record.

*Abbot and Costello*

"I thought I told ya to write it down!" motions furiously as if writing in palm with invisible pen

[QContinuum]

Biglaw partner here - I also tell my associates to bill all their time - but I always end up noticing those associates who bill way too much considering the amount and quality of work they produce. It makes me suspect they are stupid or dishonest or both. Just some food for thought.

There will always be those who are incompetent relative to their yearmates - law school grades have only so much (limited) predictive value re: actual on-the-job performance, and those who will (unethically) inflate their hours. The remedy is to push those folks out. That doesn't mean folks should start cutting their own time out of fear. That's a highway to getting overburdened and burning out in record time (because you look like you're only working 6 hours a day and can handle more work, when in fact you're already working 12).

The only good reason to self-cut, in my view, is when you screw up and need to fix it. I'm not talking about "screwing up" as in a first year's work product being totally rewritten or even tossed out altogether by a midlevel. Or a first year taking 3 hours to do what a midlevel could've done in an hour. That's not screwing up, that's just how things work in law firms, and that's why juniors have lower billing rates than seniors (to account for their lower efficiency). Rather I'm talking about "screwing up" as in spending an hour writing a memo, forgetting to save it, then needing to spend another hour rewriting that memo as a result, in which case only an hour should be billed to the client because the client shouldn't be made to pay for the duplicate work. Or if you get asked to research X, and you mistakenly spend an hour researching Y instead. The client never asked for research on Y and so the time spent researching Y should not be billed. (Again this is different from a senior asking you to spend an hour researching Y, then changing their mind and telling you to research X instead. In that case you didn't "screw up" at all, and should bill the time working on both Y and X.)

[RaceJudicata]

Second everything in here... record your time. The only time I ever write down my own time is if I screw something up along the lines of the forgetting to save a file example above, or sometimes when I’m working on couch at night watching tv.

[BaiAilian2013]

I would differ from the TLS hive mind and argue that there are occasional situations - genuine screwups among them, but not the only example - in which writing your own time down is a rational choice. However, this certainly isn't one of them. Writing down your time is a bad solution here because it harms your interests without fixing the root problem. Instead, you should figure out why things are taking so long.

First, evaluate your billing practices for accuracy. If the bill does accurately reflect the amount of time you spent actively working on the project - not on a bunch of interruptions, distractions, mind wandering, getting coffee - then the problem is in your approach to the work itself, and you need external guidance.

Sit down with someone who you trust and who does the same type of work (ideally someone like an associate slightly more senior than you), talk through your process in detail, and get their feedback to help you pinpoint the problem. Maybe you're doing too much from scratch when there are models available; maybe you're wrestling with formatting that you could delegate to a non-timekeeper; maybe you're going down tangential rabbitholes when researching, or it's taking you longer to find an answer because there are valuable sources you're not targeting. Another example: I am constitutionally incapable of proofreading more than a page or so at once. When my process was to draft and then proofread, my (attempts at) proofreading would blow my hours way past the appropriate level. So instead, I use different strategies to make sure the document isn't full of typos.

[Best]

Realization and write offs are typically a metric for your review, but I don't think its' that significant that you need to worry about it until you're sub 85% or something (unless you're taking big contingencies and having a bad year). Even then, you should probably be talking to your mentor or partners to get advice, not writing off your time.

With that said, I can imagine a situation where you're a midlevel and spend far too long working on something, perhaps because you started with an outdated document before realizing it, so you cut your own time to prevent the billing partner from having to do it thus reducing your realization.

Easier to just bill everything.

[Anonymous User]

Also a big law partner. From day one I have been told to record all my time, and I always tell associates to do so. That said, I think it is funny when folks on these forums say "never write down your own time" as if this applies to every situation. As with so many other things in this industry, this is still firm/practice group/partner specific (probably less firm and more partner specific in this case). For 90%+ of the time, recording everything and letting partners deal with it should be the right approach. However, if for some reason you are having issues, either because folks above you are questioning your efficiency (or even worse, your honesty) or you are being asked to write down time, then you have to do what you need to do to survive. I had a partner once who would tell me before every deal how much time I was allowed to bill to the matter. I avoided him like the plague, but ignoring his indirect order to write down my time would have been counterproductive for career prospects. Unfortunately, not all partners are willing to take one for the team when it comes to writing down time, and not everyone is understanding when it comes to a perceived lack of efficiency. So many people in this industry are just looking out for themselves, so unfortunately you need to do the same. Doesn't really help you to bill 2500 hours if you are going to get questioned for 500 of them, even if you legitimately had a tough year.

[politibro44]

I found when I started in practice that applying “record all your time” mindlessly could be detrimental. If you continuously take too long on assignments, partners can take notice and will avoid you. That can lead to low billables which is never good. That said, partners regularly underestimate how long it takes to do an assignment well, especially when new. So I recommend asking partners how long they expect an assignment to take and check in if it becomes more complicated or you hit an obstacle. If you communicate with them, they will better understand your hours.

But still record all your time. Just be thoughtful about how much time your taking on assignments and try to communicate when possible. It will also vary based on firm, practice group and clients.

[whats an updog]

this thread stresses me out

[Person1111]

There is an art to this, but “bill all your time unless told not to” is the correct default rule. You will eventually develop a sense of how long things “should” take and what sort of tasks are appropriate for someone at your level, and you can make downward adjustments appropriately.

[QContinuum]

There is an art to this, but “bill all your time unless told not to” is the correct default rule. You will eventually develop a sense of how long things “should” take and what sort of tasks are appropriate for someone at your level, and you can make downward adjustments appropriately.

Disagree. Yes, you develop a sense of how long things "should" take, but if a particular project takes significantly longer for whatever reason (aside from a genuine screwup on your part, like the forgetting-to-save-your-work-product example mentioned earlier ITT), the best way is to discuss with the senior, not to just keep your head down and "eat" your own time. The senior may suggest alternative approaches, narrow the scope of the work or greenlight the extra time. Like if I'm asked to research caselaw concerning apparently obscure issue X, and the senior anticipates finding maybe a dozen or two relevant cases nationwide when in fact there are thousands, I'd go to the senior and typically the senior would either greenlight additional time, or decide we should limit our review to relevant state Y instead of doing a nationwide search.

(If you are always taking more time than your yearmates, that calls for a different type of intervention. Again, just "eating" your own time to artificially "improve" your efficiency isn't the answer as working 1.5/2X as hard as your classmates while recording the same hours isn't sustainable over the long or even medium term.)

[notinbiglaw]

Or even the short term if your firm is busy. You'll soon find yourself eating sleeping and eating time.

[smokeylarue]

Bill everything. In fact, you will end up billing probably more time than it actually took in many cases. This is called padding and most people do it and you will do it too.

[QContinuum]

Bill everything. In fact, you will end up billing probably more time than it actually took in many cases. This is called padding and most people do it and you will do it too.

"Padding" is unethical and could lead to dismissal and even disbarment. Don't do it.

That said, it is possible in some cases to - ethically - end up billing more time than actually spent, due to billable hour "rounding". Say, 5-10 minute calls that get billed as a quarter-hour because that's the smallest increment.

[beepboopbeep]

I know you maybe can't answer, but what client/firm uses quarter-hour increments. I've never not had to track down to tenths.

[dabigchina]

I know you maybe can't answer, but what client/firm uses quarter-hour increments. I've never not had to track down to tenths.

I think Kirkland does this. Not sure about other big firms.

[Anonymous User]

I know you maybe can't answer, but what client/firm uses quarter-hour increments. I've never not had to track down to tenths.

We use quarter-hours for some clients at STB, even some really big clients (one of our major publicly traded PE clients has quarter-hour billing). But most clients are billed in tenths of hours, definitely.

[Anonymous User]

I know you maybe can't answer, but what client/firm uses quarter-hour increments. I've never not had to track down to tenths.

I think Kirkland does this. Not sure about other big firms.

Orrick’s public finance groups bills in quarter hour increments.

[Anonymous User]

Aside from Kirkland, I work at one of the other big Chicago firms (one of Sidley/Mayer/Jenner/Winston) and we bill in quarter hour increments for some clients.