How precise are you with billing? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Obviously padding hours is theft. I'm still a law student and don't know anything about billing beyond that you clock the hours that you work on an issue.

How precisely do most attorneys track this? Do you stop the timer for the mini breaks you take while working on an assignment? An example can be checking an email you get in the middle of doing work. Or walking to the fridge to get water. Finding a new podcast to play in the background. How strict are you?

How do people get away with padding? Do you know people that do? Every time this subject is brought up, people are quick to distance themselves from the practice of padding hours (with good reason). I'm curious about whether people are as principled about this in practice.

[Anonymous User]

Obviously padding hours is theft. I'm still a law student and don't know anything about billing beyond that you clock the hours that you work on an issue.

How precisely do most attorneys track this? Do you not take mini breaks while working on an assignment? An example can be checking an email you get in the middle of doing work. Or walking to the fridge to get water. Finding a new podcast to play in the background. How strict are you?

How do people get away with padding? Do you know people that do? Every time this subject is brought up, people are quick to distance themselves from the practice of padding hours (with good reason). I'm curious about whether people are as principled about this in practice.

I add an obligatory 0.5 to any project I do on the weekends or after 10:30pm as my personal form of protest against the unreasonable expectation of clients unless it is for some group call (where everyone should be billing the same) or a client that I particularly like.

In all seriousness, if you are actively thinking about a project you can bill for it. That includes time spent going to the bathroom, time going to the fridge, etc. It isn't strictly time spent in front of your computer actively typing.

It is up to the billing partner to determine if the hours you billed are reasonable to bill to the client in turn on any given project, not you. Experienced partners understand what the reasonable billing times are for projects and will be able to tell if you pad to an unreasonable degree.

[tlsguy2020]

I don’t know of anyone openly admitting to padding because, of course, it’s a crime. That said, the stringency toward billing varies.

Before there were timers, I’m pretty sure lawyers would roughly jot down (or take mental note) of the time they started something and the time they ended something. I’m assuming this led to rounder 0.5, 1.0 style numbers. I’ve heard stories of attorneys putting an entire months worth of time in on the last day of the month. I can’t imagine it’s hyper precise.

More commonly now, there’s a good variation. Some people look at old emails and meetings and try to remember how long they’ve worked on something. When I’ve been too busy to input my time on a daily basis, I’ve also done the same.

Other people are more methodical with timers on and off. For example, some former lawyer on Tiktok claimed that it’s unethical that clients get billed in 0.1 (or 6 minute) increments even if the task requires less than 6 minutes. He suggested (I think?) that attorneys bill in 1(!!!) minute increments. But that’s dehumanizing! We’re not machines and it’s nuts to have to turn a timer on or off every time we day dream or check a text or grab a snack. If I had a Housecleaner over for two-hours, I wouldn’t ask to deduct what they’re owed because they daydreamed or checked a text message.

[Anonymous User]

Obviously padding hours is theft. I'm still a law student and don't know anything about billing beyond that you clock the hours that you work on an issue.

How precisely do most attorneys track this? Do you not take mini breaks while working on an assignment? An example can be checking an email you get in the middle of doing work. Or walking to the fridge to get water. Finding a new podcast to play in the background. How strict are you?

How do people get away with padding? Do you know people that do? Every time this subject is brought up, people are quick to distance themselves from the practice of padding hours (with good reason). I'm curious about whether people are as principled about this in practice.

I add an obligatory 0.5 to any project I do on the weekends or after 10:30pm as my personal form of protest against the unreasonable expectation of clients unless it is for some group call (where everyone should be billing the same) or a client that I particularly like.

In all seriousness, if you are actively thinking about a project you can bill for it. That includes time spent going to the bathroom, time going to the fridge, etc. It isn't strictly time spent in front of your computer actively typing.

It is up to the billing partner to determine if the hours you billed are reasonable to bill to the client in turn on any given project, not you. Experienced partners understand what the reasonable billing times are for projects and will be able to tell if you pad to an unreasonable degree.

Thanks! This is very informative.

Do firms provide any guidelines up front about how long certain tasks should take? I assume you can ask a partner or associate when you get an assignment, when they expect it to be done by and that should give you some indication. But there's still a question there about how much time is reasonable to bill. I guess I'm worried because I tend to do things a bit slow, though thorough.

[Anonymous User]

Outside of decency and avoiding committing a crime and ethics violation: what's to stop an attorney from let's say finishing an assignment by 4 and then taking a nap until 5 but clocking that the assignment took until 5?

I get the sense that people would do this kind of thing all the time? I know no one would admit it but it seems likely? Or is this prevented due to the sheer number of assignments a big law attorney has on deck

[tlsguy2020]

Outside of decency and avoiding committing a crime and ethics violation: what's to stop an attorney from let's say finishing an assignment by 4 and then taking a nap until 5 but clocking that the assignment took until 5?

I get the sense that people would do this kind of thing all the time? I know no one would admit it but it seems likely? Or is this prevented due to the sheer number of assignments a big law attorney has on deck

Decency/avoiding a crime and ethics violation is what’s stopping this. But can someone easily get away with this? Yes definitely.

[tlsguy2020]

Obviously padding hours is theft. I'm still a law student and don't know anything about billing beyond that you clock the hours that you work on an issue.

How precisely do most attorneys track this? Do you not take mini breaks while working on an assignment? An example can be checking an email you get in the middle of doing work. Or walking to the fridge to get water. Finding a new podcast to play in the background. How strict are you?

How do people get away with padding? Do you know people that do? Every time this subject is brought up, people are quick to distance themselves from the practice of padding hours (with good reason). I'm curious about whether people are as principled about this in practice.

I add an obligatory 0.5 to any project I do on the weekends or after 10:30pm as my personal form of protest against the unreasonable expectation of clients unless it is for some group call (where everyone should be billing the same) or a client that I particularly like.

In all seriousness, if you are actively thinking about a project you can bill for it. That includes time spent going to the bathroom, time going to the fridge, etc. It isn't strictly time spent in front of your computer actively typing.

It is up to the billing partner to determine if the hours you billed are reasonable to bill to the client in turn on any given project, not you. Experienced partners understand what the reasonable billing times are for projects and will be able to tell if you pad to an unreasonable degree.

Thanks! This is very informative.

Do firms provide any guidelines up front about how long certain tasks should take? I assume you can ask a partner or associate when you get an assignment, when they expect it to be done by and that should give you some indication. But there's still a question there about how much time is reasonable to bill. I guess I'm worried because I tend to do things a bit slow, though thorough.

Big thing I learned as a first year associate is that usually slow and thorough on one assignment is better than churning fast and stressed through many.

[Anonymous User]

Outside of decency and avoiding committing a crime and ethics violation: what's to stop an attorney from let's say finishing an assignment by 4 and then taking a nap until 5 but clocking that the assignment took until 5?

I get the sense that people would do this kind of thing all the time? I know no one would admit it but it seems likely? Or is this prevented due to the sheer number of assignments a big law attorney has on deck

Paranoia. Everything we do on computers is largely logged. So to me that's enough to not inflate time.

[Anonymous User]

Big thing I learned as a first year associate is that usually slow and thorough on one assignment is better than churning fast and stressed through many.

Slow and thorough is a good quality for first-year associates to have, but you will be expected to become more efficient as time goes in. Depends probably on your firm and practice group.

I've had partners tell me during my late 3rd year that they'd rather work with associates who get things 95% right but twice as fast than associates who get it 100% right but take twice as long. "Right" being like legal advice wise not basics like typos, etc. which should always be perfect. We had some more cost conscious clients though.

[Anonymous User]

Big thing I learned as a first year associate is that usually slow and thorough on one assignment is better than churning fast and stressed through many.

Slow and thorough is a good quality for first-year associates to have, but you will be expected to become more efficient as time goes in. Depends probably on your firm and practice group.

I've had partners tell me during my late 3rd year that they'd rather work with associates who get things 95% right but twice as fast than associates who get it 100% right but take twice as long. "Right" being like legal advice wise not basics like typos, etc. which should always be perfect. We had some more cost conscious clients though.

There’s definitely a divide between my matters.

Matter 1 is endless complex commercial litigation with 50+ attorneys. Everything encouraged to be precise, accurate, no matter the cost. Partners are terrified of the client — one time, the GC couldn’t open a zip file leading to multiple 9 pm phone calls and dozens of emails.

Matter 2 is an IP litigation involving a privately-held company with revenue sub-$1B. Junior associates routinely directly contact in-house counsel. Watermarks and tables of contents do not need to be anywhere near perfect, just accurate.

Both are stressful in different ways, but Matter 1 certainly invites slower, more deliberate work.

[Anonymous User]

Outside of decency and avoiding committing a crime and ethics violation: what's to stop an attorney from let's say finishing an assignment by 4 and then taking a nap until 5 but clocking that the assignment took until 5?

I get the sense that people would do this kind of thing all the time? I know no one would admit it but it seems likely? Or is this prevented due to the sheer number of assignments a big law attorney has on deck

Paranoia. Everything we do on computers is largely logged. So to me that's enough to not inflate time.

Great point.

[Anonymous User]

Outside of decency and avoiding committing a crime and ethics violation: what's to stop an attorney from let's say finishing an assignment by 4 and then taking a nap until 5 but clocking that the assignment took until 5?

I get the sense that people would do this kind of thing all the time? I know no one would admit it but it seems likely? Or is this prevented due to the sheer number of assignments a big law attorney has on deck

Paranoia. Everything we do on computers is largely logged. So to me that's enough to not inflate time.

Great point.

I mean...that's valid for widescale abuse, but that would probably be noticeable without any sort of tracking (e.g. if you bill 15 hours to something that should've taken 2 hours someone might go back and check your internet history and see you spent all day shopping, but they probably don't need to do that to know you padded). But if you legit billed 8 hours to a matter, no amount of tracking is gonna prove that an extra 1 hour was padded. Not all of your legitimately billed time involves a key stroke in a document or a call. People absolutely pad their time...I've known some who were pretty egregious about it and never got in any real trouble (maybe get a stern talking to by a partner here and there, but always got an above market bonus, class promotion, etc.). Firms just aren't really incentivized to seek it out and penalize it.

I think for most who bill accurately, the real answer is ethics. There's nothing external that really prevents attorneys from padding their time (up to a point).

[Anonymous User]

I’m pretty accurate. I have a running personal internal doc that tracks what I’m doing at every minute of the day (it’s a lot of lines saying [time]-[time] and there’s a description).

Somebody once said to me that the clients are paying humans to do the work, as opposed to robots, and humans are going to zone out for a sec, go to the bathroom, grab water, check their texts every hour or two, etc. so I don’t stop for that. But for bigger zone outs or something, yeah, I’ll dock myself.

But I also come up with some of my best ideas (I’m a litigator) while in shower, run, trying to get to sleep…and I do my best to bill 5-15 minutes here and there for that stuff.

FWIW, the internal tracker spooks me because I’m a huge hard copy person, associates, partners, and I will frequently just call one another using normal cell numbers (Ie no blocked meetings), etc. so my internal tracker is usually about 3/4 of my total billables. But nobody has said anything yet.

As a senior associate, a broad piece of advice is that eventually you stop thinking about how long something should take you and relatedly you stop getting self conscious about how long something did take you. It’ll take as long as it takes. Partner can deal with the rest and if you have a good rep, by the time you’re a mid, you’ll be invited to participate in way more matters than you can handle anyway…so one partner thinking you take too long isn’t a big deal. Way more important to add independent value to your matters, and avoid typos at all costs.

[Anonymous User]

Do firms provide any guidelines up front about how long certain tasks should take? I assume you can ask a partner or associate when you get an assignment, when they expect it to be done by and that should give you some indication. But there's still a question there about how much time is reasonable to bill. I guess I'm worried because I tend to do things a bit slow, though thorough.

FWIW, at my firm partners are pretty bad at estimating how long a task will take (especially one partner I work a lot with). As a first year, I would normally take their estimated time and double it. I never got called out for spending too much time and that one partner loves me and my work. I know many others who did the same. It's all about quality.

[Anonymous User]

Ah the eternal debate.

My two cents: the appropriate and ethical thing is to just start the timer when you're working, keep it on if you take a short break (e.g. go to the bathroom, go down the hall to get a cup of coffee) as you're probably still somewhat thinking about the job anyway, but anything that is longer (like going to chat to someone else, taking a break to read an article, etc.) you should stop it.

In practice, however, I've gotten more and more egregious with padding. This kind of started as I noticed other people doing it, who were more senior than me. Like at my office it was a widespread practice to always just keep the timer running if you were 'working' past midnight, as the reasoning was "you'd be sleeping if not for the work." So even if you were just waiting for something to come through for three hours, you still bill that time. But that's also where it gets dicey. What if you are awaiting, but decide to sleep, but set an alarm every 30 minutes? What if you're somebody who goes to bed early and actually falls asleep at 11pm every day? Can they start billing the moment 11pm hits? What if you're a late riser, but are waking up early because you're expecting work to come in (but then it doesn't come in)? Surely this billing late practice should also work the other way around?

I once even saw someone on Reddit wonder if hey can bill their dreams to the client, as they apparently dreamt about their work. In a way I suppose you can call it brainstorming, right?

This is just a handful of examples and it really depends on what the lawyer's taste is for taking liberties. Fact of the matter is, you will rarely get caught, unless you start saying insane stuff.

[Anonymous User]

In practice, however, I've gotten more and more egregious with padding. This kind of started as I noticed other people doing it, who were more senior than me. Like at my office it was a widespread practice to always just keep the timer running if you were 'working' past midnight, as the reasoning was "you'd be sleeping if not for the work." So even if you were just waiting for something to come through for three hours, you still bill that time. But that's also where it gets dicey. What if you are awaiting, but decide to sleep, but set an alarm every 30 minutes? What if you're somebody who goes to bed early and actually falls asleep at 11pm every day? Can they start billing the moment 11pm hits? What if you're a late riser, but are waking up early because you're expecting work to come in (but then it doesn't come in)? Surely this billing late practice should also work the other way around?

I don't see why some of this is so egregious. Most client-service industries that bill by the hour will bill travel time, even if you're not doing any work at the time (though many partners write this off). If you're stuck in the office for a filing and waiting for the paralegal to finish something up, I don't see how that's much different. You're required to be there in service of your client. Of course, best practice is to actually get some work done during that period, but that can be hard if it's late and you're tired.

I think the line gets more blurry with WFH. If I'm waiting on a PL and go cook diner, I don't bill that time. If, on the other hand, I'm required to be available and am repeatedly refreshing my inbox at 1:30am waiting for that "done" email, I would bill that. To me, it's more about whether the nature of the task requires you to be doing what you're doing.

[Anonymous User]

I am not saying this to encourage padding, but you can probably safely add 10-25% to your billable throughout the year and it would be impossible to prove and no one would ever care (plus firms have zero incentives to prove it or even really investigating). And that is probably a conservative estimate. At the end of the day padding helps the firms even more than the associates and anything short of client complaints is unlikely to even raise eyebrows.

In answer to the question, agree with start the time when you start the task and only pause for bigger breaks. Also try to have a running narrative that you can update in relative real time, really takes the sting out of time entry.

One last thing, public forums like TLS or Fishbowl are going to present a skewed view of billing. I know people who would consider the normal billing practices described in this thread as naive and conservative when it comes to billing.

[Anonymous User]

I have one DD exercises where I had a podcast in the background, and I sometimes paid more attention to the podcast than the DD work. My work slowed down a lot as a result, I'm sure. I just billed the time and that was that. I've also been on calls whilst doing work on something else, and then just billed time for both the call and the separate work I was doing. I once had to write a doc and the entire exercise was insanely stupid as I knew it would not be used. So halfway through the assignment I vented about it to my partner for 20 minutes. I billed that too, I can even assert that I was just discussing the assignment. Once I had my final deal of the year ending, but I still about an hour away from my billables requirement. So I just proofread the document a few times. You never know after all!

Do I think all of these are perfectly fine to bill? Maybe, maybe not. But I think there is a reason why lawyers don't tell you how to bill. It's a don't ask, don't tell policy. Do what works for you, just maybe don't completely make things up.

[Spider2YBanana]

What you bill and what gets passed along to the client are two different things. If you took too long, the relationship partner will generally write it off.

[Anonymous User]

I have one DD exercises where I had a podcast in the background, and I sometimes paid more attention to the podcast than the DD work. My work slowed down a lot as a result, I'm sure. I just billed the time and that was that. I've also been on calls whilst doing work on something else, and then just billed time for both the call and the separate work I was doing. I once had to write a doc and the entire exercise was insanely stupid as I knew it would not be used. So halfway through the assignment I vented about it to my partner for 20 minutes. I billed that too, I can even assert that I was just discussing the assignment. Once I had my final deal of the year ending, but I still about an hour away from my billables requirement. So I just proofread the document a few times. You never know after all!

Do I think all of these are perfectly fine to bill? Maybe, maybe not. But I think there is a reason why lawyers don't tell you how to bill. It's a don't ask, don't tell policy. Do what works for you, just maybe don't completely make things up.

Double billing the same time to multiple clients is literally a textbook example of an ethics violation. So is completely unnecessarily duplicative review to pad hours.

Anyone reading the above: Hope that it's sarcasm. But if it's not, don't emulate. If I found out someone was doing this I would feel absolutely compelled to report them under my state's mandatory reporting rules.

[Anonymous User]

I have one DD exercises where I had a podcast in the background, and I sometimes paid more attention to the podcast than the DD work. My work slowed down a lot as a result, I'm sure. I just billed the time and that was that. I've also been on calls whilst doing work on something else, and then just billed time for both the call and the separate work I was doing. I once had to write a doc and the entire exercise was insanely stupid as I knew it would not be used. So halfway through the assignment I vented about it to my partner for 20 minutes. I billed that too, I can even assert that I was just discussing the assignment. Once I had my final deal of the year ending, but I still about an hour away from my billables requirement. So I just proofread the document a few times. You never know after all!

Do I think all of these are perfectly fine to bill? Maybe, maybe not. But I think there is a reason why lawyers don't tell you how to bill. It's a don't ask, don't tell policy. Do what works for you, just maybe don't completely make things up.

Double billing the same time to multiple clients is literally a textbook example of an ethics violation. So is completely unnecessarily duplicative review to pad hours.

Anyone reading the above: Hope that it's sarcasm. But if it's not, don't emulate. If I found out someone was doing this I would feel absolutely compelled to report them under my state's mandatory reporting rules.

Dude, I know a ton of people who might be forced to be on a call (if there is like 20 people on it and you aren't leading it or even the primary associate on it) who might also spend some of that time responding to other quick emails, etc. I had a partner who had me lead calls every so often purely so that he could actively work on other stuff during the call and then chime in when he felt he needed to. Exercise your own judgment of the situation.

[Anonymous User]

Every time billing comes up on TLS, the big law boy scouts start to discuss how much of an ethics violation it is to pad hours and waste no time telling us about how they would never!

I don't expect people that routinely pad hours to be brazen about it and post on TLS about it. The reality is that a significant number of big law partners want you to maximize the number of hours billed (even unethically) without it resulting in their having to deal with client complaints. And as long as they can claim ignorance of this padding.

I am not suggesting that everyone pads hours or that they should. I am suggesting that the discussion on TLS does not seem to reflect the way that most big law attorneys think of billing. Most people I know in practice are pretty liberal with careless padding. Not necessarily brazen, but certainly not as careful as the people on TLS appear to be.

[Anonymous User]

I have one DD exercises where I had a podcast in the background, and I sometimes paid more attention to the podcast than the DD work. My work slowed down a lot as a result, I'm sure. I just billed the time and that was that. I've also been on calls whilst doing work on something else, and then just billed time for both the call and the separate work I was doing. I once had to write a doc and the entire exercise was insanely stupid as I knew it would not be used. So halfway through the assignment I vented about it to my partner for 20 minutes. I billed that too, I can even assert that I was just discussing the assignment. Once I had my final deal of the year ending, but I still about an hour away from my billables requirement. So I just proofread the document a few times. You never know after all!

Do I think all of these are perfectly fine to bill? Maybe, maybe not. But I think there is a reason why lawyers don't tell you how to bill. It's a don't ask, don't tell policy. Do what works for you, just maybe don't completely make things up.

Double billing the same time to multiple clients is literally a textbook example of an ethics violation. So is completely unnecessarily duplicative review to pad hours.

Anyone reading the above: Hope that it's sarcasm. But if it's not, don't emulate. If I found out someone was doing this I would feel absolutely compelled to report them under my state's mandatory reporting rules.

Dude, I know a ton of people who might be forced to be on a call (if there is like 20 people on it and you aren't leading it or even the primary associate on it) who might also spend some of that time responding to other quick emails, etc. I had a partner who had me lead calls every so often purely so that he could actively work on other stuff during the call and then chime in when he felt he needed to. Exercise your own judgment of the situation.

You exercise your own judgment of that situation by billing to the more appropriate matter (probably not the call), not by double billing. I was using literal in the proper sense. This is classic double billing and it is very, very not ok. It's only a little better than the classic example of double billing when you work while traveling. There are a lot of shades of gray in billing--like the thing about whether to cut some time if you were exceedingly distracted while working, or whether you need to review the document one more time. This isn't one of them.

I don't normally get heated on TLS but no one should read your post and come away thinking that double billing for the time is ok.

[Anonymous User]

I have one DD exercises where I had a podcast in the background, and I sometimes paid more attention to the podcast than the DD work. My work slowed down a lot as a result, I'm sure. I just billed the time and that was that. I've also been on calls whilst doing work on something else, and then just billed time for both the call and the separate work I was doing. I once had to write a doc and the entire exercise was insanely stupid as I knew it would not be used. So halfway through the assignment I vented about it to my partner for 20 minutes. I billed that too, I can even assert that I was just discussing the assignment. Once I had my final deal of the year ending, but I still about an hour away from my billables requirement. So I just proofread the document a few times. You never know after all!

Do I think all of these are perfectly fine to bill? Maybe, maybe not. But I think there is a reason why lawyers don't tell you how to bill. It's a don't ask, don't tell policy. Do what works for you, just maybe don't completely make things up.

Double billing the same time to multiple clients is literally a textbook example of an ethics violation. So is completely unnecessarily duplicative review to pad hours.

Anyone reading the above: Hope that it's sarcasm. But if it's not, don't emulate. If I found out someone was doing this I would feel absolutely compelled to report them under my state's mandatory reporting rules.

Dude, I know a ton of people who might be forced to be on a call (if there is like 20 people on it and you aren't leading it or even the primary associate on it) who might also spend some of that time responding to other quick emails, etc. I had a partner who had me lead calls every so often purely so that he could actively work on other stuff during the call and then chime in when he felt he needed to. Exercise your own judgment of the situation.

You exercise your own judgment of that situation by billing to the more appropriate matter (probably not the call), not by double billing. I was using literal in the proper sense. This is classic double billing and it is very, very not ok. It's only a little better than the classic example of double billing when you work while traveling. There are a lot of shades of gray in billing--like the thing about whether to cut some time if you were exceedingly distracted while working, or whether you need to review the document one more time. This isn't one of them.

I don't normally get heated on TLS but no one should read your post and come away thinking that double billing for the time is ok.

So as an associate, my conclusion would then be what? That I should never do any work (even emails) during a call, meeting, or training, even if I’m capable of doing it? Sounds like I’d be wasting my time and the firm’s money because that work could have been billed for after the call if I just waited until it was over. Incentives for being inefficient and slow.

[Anonymous User]

The reality is:

1) double billing is a text book ethical violation and if you ever admit to doing it your firm will be pissed and it will have sever consequences;

2) tons of people double bill at all levels of firms, definitely know a few partners who do it pretty regularly;

3) it's really hard to prove someone double billed short of them admitting to it;

4) not double billing leads to either intentionally working inefficiently or giving a client a discount depending on whether you decide not work on your call.

Make you own choices and decisions from there.