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NER - lawyers, work advice
So, the place I am working for hired me as a contract attorney. The position might turn into a permanent offer, but I'm fine with it as it is right now because it's a good job but not my dream job, so I've got income and some flexibility to job hunt if my bar results are good.
Here's the problem. They are a little disorganized and I don't think they have ever had a contract attorney before. And I don't have this endless supply of a discrete task, like doc review. I'm really just helping one partner who's behind and overworked get caught up on a bunch of stuff. I'm essentially a 30-40 hour a week associate. Or actually, maybe like a law clerk, because I'm working on stuff that I am entirely unfamiliar with, so there's a training aspect to my job, and I have lots of questions and things just take me longer.
I have to bill all my time and I'm pretty much only getting paid for what I bill (plus a small amount every day that I bill to general firm overhead). They have told me I can work from home, but I don't really see how that's possible yet. So, I need to be in the office most of the time.
This is creating some problems. For example, one day last week, I was stuck on a project and needed to talk to a partner to go any further. She was on the phone and doing other stuff, so I had to wait 45 minutes with nothing to do. I can't bill that time to anyone, but I was stuck in the office.
Likewise, every Friday, they have firm lunches where they order in food, and all the attorneys (12ish) gather in the conference room and just chat about their cases. They told me I'm welcome to participate, and I'd like to so I look interested and make them want to give me a permanent job. But the lunches run anywhere from 1-2 hours, and again, that's not really time I can bill.
Finally, billing sucks and it's hard. While I had to do it as a paralegal and law clerk, I haven't done it in almost two years since I was at the government. I'm assigned a lot of different stuff, so there's a lot of time just spent jumping from task to task, talking to my secretary, organizing my files, etc. You all know how hard it is to really capture everything that you do during a day. I keep track contemporenously, but it's impossible not to miss stuff.
I'd like to come up with a system that's fair to me and fair to them. I'm getting paid considerably more as a contractor than I would be as a regular employee, so I realize that this comes at a cost. But, I don't really think the system now is working.
Any thoughts on how I might approach them about a better arrangement?
And if you work an 8 hour day, how many hours should you bill to clients and how much to general firm overhead?
Thanks!
Re: NER - lawyers, work advice
This is why we work such long hours -- there is so much time that can't be billed, and an eight-hour day is unheard of.
Back in the day, I would have to work at least 10 hours to make sure I could bill at least 8.5 a day. (8.5 was just a personal goal I set for myself each day.)
I don't have any suggestions for a better arrangement, but sunk hours are par for the course.
Welcome to the wonderful world of billable hours.
On a normal day, if I'm not sitting in my office writing or preparing for a hearing, it takes me 1.5 hours to bill an hour. This is because I don't have a secretary. So, I have to print all my crap, sign it, scan it, put it in the client's electronic file, make a copy and put it in the client's hard file, print the envelope, draft the affidavit of service (if applicable), find someone to notarize, make a copy of that, and then put the postage on it and record it in the mail log. But - I only have to bill an average of about 4-5 hrs/day to meet my yearly billable "requirement."
Keeping track of my billing was difficult for me at first, but I developed a system that works really well for me. If you want to discuss it, I'd love to over email.
Ok this is all very helpful.
I open up my time tracking software the minute I walk into my office and enter things as I go, but keeping a little pad of paper to track things like emails so if I read three emails for one client throughout the day, I can just add them up at the end of the day.
Everywhere I've worked there's always been a general firm line item for things like billing, administrative stuff, and just a catchall for random things. Of course, this is the first completely non-support staff role I've had, so I'm not sure what is normal for attornies.
I had to bill 120 hours a month to clients when I was a law clerk (I went to school at night, so I was working a 40 hour work week) and I usually managed to do that, but that was a couple years ago, and I had a salary and benefits then. But hearing what you all are saying, it sounds like my problem is less about billing and more about the mental adjustment of only get paid exactly what I bill. I think where I am having issues is that I'm essentially required to be in the office all day (at least right now), but I can't possibly get paid for all the time I spend it in the office. I'm spending 40 hours a week there, but only getting paid for 30...it's just weird to me.
Hopefully it will start to go a little more smoothly as I get used to billing again and actually start to understand the assignments that I am working on.
Thanks for the advice!
I think the other posters are missing the point that you actually don't get paid at all for your non-billable time. Associates usually are paid a salary, regardless of the amount of unbillable time they have in a given day, so your situation isn't the same. You are losing money from your own pocket when you don't bill.
Billing hours is the worst part of the job (and the primary reason I left law firm practice). I agree that you will work far more hours than you can bill. I used to joke that I worked 12 hours to bill for 7 (In reality, a good day was billing 9-10 hours out of 12). However, the more you do it, the more efficient you will become.
Certain things, such as lunch, are unavoidable losses of time in terms of your billables, but think of those hours as time spent developing your career. You also will learn to multi-task and have other work with you at all times to tend to when you have down time, such as waiting for someone to get off the phone. I realize you have very little extra work right now but you just started. Give it some time and you most likely will find the work piling up. You also will start to automatically characterize work as you receive it as work that must be done immediately vs. can be done as multi-task work. Given that you are paid only for actual hours billed, it will be very important for you to learn to be hyper-organized and efficient with your time, but you knew that.
Accounting for every minute of your day is next to impossible, but it's a skill that can be acquired with adequate practice. I know it's terribly frustrating now. As I said, this is the primary reason I gave up my cushy law firm job. I just couldn't take the billing bullshit.