December 2005

Free Billable Hours

by Paul H. Burton

Okay, they’re not free. Then again few things are. But the bottom line for lawyers is billable hours. No matter how many hours you work, it’s the ones billed to clients that serve as your productivity measure. Increased billable hours mean better performance. This article focuses on techniques for quickly adding several hours of billable time to your timesheet every week.

There are three fundamental ways to increase your billable time: (1) improved legal skills, (2) a larger number of lawyers billing on your behalf, and (3) better capture of the hours you are currently working. The first and second come with time and experience. The third will produce results immediately.

Without diving into an extended conceptual analysis, lawyers measure what they sell (intellectual property) in increments of time — a fixed resource. As with any scarce resource, maximizing utilization is imperative, because simply working more is not a long-term solution. Here are several ways to rapidly improve your effective use and capture of billable hours:

Managing E-mail

The killer application that ushered in the Internet era can also be a huge time sink. Tuning your use of this powerful communication tool can rapidly increase your billable time.

•  Turn off any new message notifications. This is a huge distraction to whatever you’re doing. E-mail is an asynchronous communication tool. You do not need to know every time one hits your inbox. And don’t worry, they’re not going anywhere! Simply check your e-mail regularly (twice an hour or so) to stay abreast of what’s happening.

•  Remove your work e-mail address from any personal e-mail subscriptions you receive. Keep your inbox tidy and uncluttered. Get rid of the local snow report or special of the day at your favorite online retailer. This will eliminate additional distraction from billing your time.

• Ask to be removed from any professional/office e-mail lists you don’t need to receive. Again, these represent a distraction from your work. Simply draft a polite, professional e-mail to the list manager asking to be removed.

•  Actively remove yourself from lists that you’re not reading. Most professional purveyors of lists provide a simple unsubscribe mechanism. Take advantage of it. Again, don’t worry. You can always resubscribe.

•  Spot review your inbox from home in the evening, and reply to any quick requests for information. Yes, you’re working at home, but this is the new professional landscape. If you can handle several small items from home in the evening, they’ll be on someone else’s desk in the morning. You’ll be working on more substantive issues.

• Bill all e-mail correspondence. Forward a copy of all billable e-mails to yourself or assistant with the client, matter, and billable time in the subject line. This will ensure that billable e-mails get billed and create a paper trail of your work.

Sequestering

It’s not just for juries! The idea here is to find a place or process that provides you uninterrupted time to get work done. This doesn’t mean all day, nor does it mean leaving the country. We’re looking for a defined period each day (one to two hours) when you are able to focus on the highest-priority tasks. As for any perception of unavailability, remember you can’t bill perceptions. Here are some specifics:

• Privatize your office. Close your door and DND your phone. If people continue to interrupt you, put a DND sign on your door. You can make it light — “Great Mind at Work, Please Do Not Disturb” or “Out to Work, Back at X:XX o’clock” or something equally inventive but clear.

• Establish a secondary workplace. If the firm has a library, go there. If the firm or office building has a small conference or caucus room, reserve one and go there. Even an empty office will do. Take only the things you’re going to work on, sit down, and get the work done!

• Work from home. Come in late or go home early one day a week. If you’re going to do this, you must commit to getting the work done. This is an opportunity to increase performance, but the temptation to mess around can undermine your objective, so be careful!
 
You will inevitably be hunted down or interrupted. This is when it is imperative that you politely but clearly explain that you’re not currently available, and that you’ll get back to them immediately when you are. Then make sure you do it! It’s an opportunity to retrain those you work with to understand that, in fact, you’re enlisting their help to increase your productivity. Remember this: If you were out sick that day, you wouldn’t be available either.

Capture All Billable Time

This is the never-ending nag about writing down your time as you bill it. The statistics are overwhelming — you lose 20 percent of your billable time if you don’t write it down immediately upon completing the work. So track it constantly through the day! Here are some tips:

• Get client/matter numbers at the inception. If you’re handed a file or engaged in a discussion with another lawyer, ask for the client/matter number up front. This will do two things: (1) make it clear that you’re going to bill the time you work and (2) eliminate the need for you or your assistant to chase it down later, which is a waste of billable time!

• Copy yourself/assistant on e-mails with the client/matter number and amount of time spent. I’ll say it again: Here’s your track record of what you’ve done in e-mail. If necessary, you can print them and have them transferred to the billing program, but at least it’s captured!

• Complete your timesheet every day by day’s end at the latest. The best practice is to keep a running log of time (software-based or otherwise) of everything you do as you do it. If you’re a scrap-of-paper person, then you need to aggregate and compile the list into your billing program before going home. Even if your memory rivals that of the elephant, you will miss things if you don’t do this every single day. The research simply supports this conclusion.

Implementing these suggestions will increase your productivity, measured by increased billable hours. Even if you pick up only one extra billable hour per week, you will gain 50 billable hours per year. And remember, these are hours you’re already working, so the result is higher productivity without additional time commitments!  

Paul H. Burton is a principal in Vision Mechanix, a professional development consulting firm that works exclusively with lawyers and law firms. Vision Mechanix provides training and consulting in the areas of business development, leadership skills, and practice management. Burton is a recovering corporate-finance attorney with an extensive background in personal and organizational development. He can be reached at paul@visionmechanix.com.