Is 1000+ hours on one matter normal? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm a junior associate and have billed over 1,000 hours to one matter alone over the past year. No one has said anything to me, and I don't "pad" my hours (in fact I probably have a bad habit of under-billing), but is this normal? For context, it was basically a full-scale litigation crammed into 11 months where I was the only junior associate on the team.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a junior associate and have billed over 1,000 hours to one matter alone over the past year. No one has said anything to me, and I don't "pad" my hours (in fact I probably have a bad habit of under-billing), but is this normal? For context, it was basically a full-scale litigation crammed into 11 months where I was the only junior associate on the team.

For litigation, yes, it’s possible to bill most your time to one case for a year or more. This would be much more unusual for corporate.

[Anonymous User]

It's not only normal in some ways it's desirable because it puts you on the path toward becoming a "go to" for a client. We'd rather see attorneys with 2-3 major matters (talking litigation) than doing random crap on 10 different cases for the year. You tend to see the latter more with juniors and then as they gain experience they settle into a better rhythm, so it sounds like in some ways you're ahead of the curve. The only thing to be careful with--the other side of the coin about the 10 random matters situation--is that you're still getting exposure to enough partners in your group so that you don't become isolated. But you might already be doing that through a number of small matters with the other half of your 2,000 hours for the year.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a junior associate and have billed over 1,000 hours to one matter alone over the past year. No one has said anything to me, and I don't "pad" my hours (in fact I probably have a bad habit of under-billing), but is this normal? For context, it was basically a full-scale litigation crammed into 11 months where I was the only junior associate on the team.

For litigation, yes, it’s possible to bill most your time to one case for a year or more. This would be much more unusual for corporate.

In M&A it's possible that you'd get close to 1,000 on a really complex deal that lasts a long time (maybe even more than one year. I've billed to a deal that, due to regulatory delays, add on transactions, and other hiccups lasted more than three years), but its atypical. Maybe the best way to put it is 1,000 is unusual, but not unheard of. I would also suspect that, if you've been billing so much for a long time, a partner would bring it up if they thought it was odd. I've never known personally or through my corp colleagues to have questioned a huge billable charge that was honestly recorded. The only people I've seen called out were notorious padders (i.e. it was an open joke that they would never be staffed on a deal with cost sensitivities).

[Anonymous User]

I'm a junior associate and have billed over 1,000 hours to one matter alone over the past year. No one has said anything to me, and I don't "pad" my hours (in fact I probably have a bad habit of under-billing), but is this normal? For context, it was basically a full-scale litigation crammed into 11 months where I was the only junior associate on the team.

I billed about 7,000 hours to one matter before I billed 100 hours on all my other billable matters combined. It was abnormal, but it was nice having one person to answer to. The big downside is that you don't get exposure to other people/work, which can be good and bad.

[DukeMountain]

You probably want to try to get experience on other matters as well if you can

[Anonymous User]

I'll echo what others have said that, in the context of litigation, this is completely normal for a litigation that was full speed for a year, and actually a pretty good sign. So long as your reviewing partner agrees the time is justified, it means you are actually an integral member of the lit team, and that is a sign that the team (and the client) trusts your work. and you likely would have heard something by now if they thought you were spending too much time on the case.