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Watching the clock: Tips for attorneys who want to boost billable hours

By: Jane Pribek//April 23, 2013//

Watching the clock: Tips for attorneys who want to boost billable hours

By: Jane Pribek//April 23, 2013//

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And the survey says…

The LexisNexis billable hours survey reported on the gap between total hours worked by attorneys and the number of hours devoted daily to nonbillable, work-related activities.

The survey included attorneys from all law firm sizes, with more than 90 percent of respondents employed at firms of 20 or fewer lawyers.

LexisNexis then conducted a follow-up survey to answer these questions: What types of activities eat up the time that attorneys do not bill to clients? Do attorneys at large firms more effectively bill hours than their colleagues at small firms? Or is billing efficiency more related to practice area?

More than 1,000 attorneys responded to the follow-up survey, and, according to LexisNexis, “50 percent of the respondents ranked administrative or practice management tasks — such as document management, filing, docketing, billing — as the No. 1 or 2 activity responsible for the biggest share of nonbillable work hours.”

LexisNexis reported the findings were consistent across firms of all sizes and geographies.

The practice areas, according to the survey, that spend the most amount of time on nonbillable work were:

* Immigration: More than 40 percent of respondents reported spending more than four hours per day on nonbillable activities.

* Personal injury: Thirty-four percent spend more than four hours per day on nonbillable activities.

The practice areas, according to the survey, that spend the least amount of time on nonbillable work were:

* Insurance: Seventy-six percent of respondents reported spending two or fewer hours daily on nonbillable hours.

* Labor and employment: Fifty-four percent reported spending two or fewer hours daily on nonbillable hours.

* Litigators: Fifty-one percent reported spending two or fewer hours daily on nonbillable hours.

— Jane Pribek

Wisconsin lawyers spend 37 percent of their time on work that goes unbilled, according to a national survey.

Lawyers in Wisconsin landed in the top third of LexisNexis’ Law Firm Billable Hours Survey. The survey reported that the amount of nonbillable time was higher in 15 other states.

But Nerino Petro, law practice manager for the State Bar of Wisconsin, said Wisconsin attorneys should not beat themselves up for that finding.

“You just can’t bill for everything,” Petro said. “That is the reality.”

The survey, which polled nearly 500 attorneys from across the U.S., also concluded that lawyers at large firms have higher average billing rates than those who work at firms with one or two attorneys.

“In Wisconsin, over 60 percent of our lawyers are in firms of five or fewer attorneys, who don’t have full-time firm administrators,” Petro said. “So they have to spend time on the business side of their practices.”

Law-office management analysts say unbilled time is not necessarily bad, but there is a difference between that and wasted time.

Diane Niksa, practice manager of Kaplan Law Firm SC in Mequon, said office administration, practice management, continuing education and business development account for most unbilled time. Those are important activities, she said, particularly if marketing leads to billable hours, and administration gets the bills out on time.

Nationally, the survey found the average number of hours worked on any given day is 8.9, but lawyers typically bill for only 6.9 hours.

The general culture in Wisconsin and at many small firms is to strike a balance between work and personal time, Niksa said, so billing 6.9 hours per workday is fine for many lawyers.

But there are ways to increase that number.

Set a schedule

Planning can go a long way toward reaching goals for billable hours.

In a perfect week, Milwaukee attorney Mark Goldstein said, he schedules blocks of time, usually in the mornings, to work on specific projects. He keeps the interruptions to a minimum, and then reserves time later in the day to work on nonbillable tasks such as administration, networking and marketing.

But he knows he has to be flexible, Goldstein said.

“Recognize that you never have an optimal week,” he said, “and if you accomplish 30 to 50 percent of the optimal week, that’s still a vast improvement over being in constant firefighter mode, reacting to other people’s schedules.”

It can be tempting to cross off the calendar those nonbillable activities, particularly if a prospective client wants to come in at those times. That’s fine, Niksa said, as long as there is a commitment to reschedule whatever it is that was cancelled.

Log the hours

Poor timekeeping practices, such as not recording hours until later in the day or week, also can contribute to fewer billable hours.

“When you re-create it, chances are a significant percentage of billable time will be lost,” Niksa said. “You are not going to remember everything. You’re just not.”

Those who use old methods for timekeeping can run into big problems, Petro said.

“We’re still seeing a lot of lawyers, especially in smaller firms, who aren’t using modern technology to accurately track their time,” Petro said. “They’re entering time on Excel spreadsheets, in a WordPerfect or Word document, or they’re re-creating their time and billing it in Quicken when there really are inexpensively priced tools that are specifically designed to capture time for lawyers.”

For attorneys who aren’t willing to use time-and-billing software, Petro said, there are other tools that can monitor what attorneys do on their computers. Chrometa, for example, records how long someone uses an application and specifically notes the files or emails that were worked on and the time spent on each.

Turn off the technology

Technology, coupled with a desire to provide good client service, means attorneys often jump from task to task, Goldstein said.

“With email and electronic communications, a lot of time gets lost as we transition between tasks,” he said. “That makes it very difficult to account for time and to focus.”

There are moments when turning off the technology is a good idea. For example, Goldstein said, he uses a double-monitor setup, but sometimes shuts one of the screens down when he needs to concentrate on a project.

The need to reduce distractions, Niksa said, extends to smart phones, which “can be a huge thief of your billable time instead of an assistant to it.”

Delegate

Delegating has been central to La Crosse attorney Heidi Eglash’s becoming more efficient while growing her practice.

When she started her law firm, she initially shared office space and was one of five attorneys who used one staff person. Because there were so many attorneys, Eglash said, she often did the typing, filing and bookkeeping rather than waiting in line. Her days were long, and her billable hours did not always reflect that.

She said she learned from that experience and uses it when managing her own staff workers.

“In our office,” Eglash said, “the mantra is: We make the highest and best use of everyone’s talents at all times.”

For example, a legal secretary can schedule appointments or communicate with clients, and a paralegal can gather facts or review draft documents with clients.

Initially, delegating does not come easy. Eglash said it needs to develop as a habit, and it flourishes with good communication.

“You have to set a tone of teamwork, and that no one’s dumping on anybody,” she said. “It’s not about ego trips. It’s just in the clients’ best interests. It’s a simple conversation that needs to be repeated and reinforced from time to time.”

Her billable hours increased when she hired her own staff members, Eglash said, but it was not a dramatic change because managing people and delegating also take time.

Dolan Media Newswires also contributed to this report.

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