How Much Do Lawyers Work? (LAWYER'S AVERAGE DAY!)

most I have ever heard of an attorney physically billing in a single year is 3,200 hours and if you have no idea what that means and no context for that number and what that looks like on a daily basis don't worry keep watching and you're about to find out one of the biggest questions and misconceptions people have about lawyers is how much two lawyers actually work because you hear about billable hours all the time the hours and minutes that an attorney is working and actually billing to a client to be paid but you'll hear far less about how many hours in the office that really translates into so how many hours an attorney has to be working in order to hit those billable hours because there's anyone who's ever had an office job knows you're not actually working every minute of that workday so let's look at billable hour requirements first now the general rule of thumb when you're an associate and a mid to large-sized law firm is that if you're in a more regional market you'll be billing around 2,000 hours per year so those are markets like Dallas Miami or Atlanta and if you're in a larger market you're going to be billing about 2200 hours per year so that's New York San Francisco Chicago tight markets now it's definitely true that these are not the billing hour requirements across the board if you're in a smaller sized firm if you're in a smaller market your billable hour requirements could be far fewer and if you're not at a law firm at all if you're working in-house at a corporation or if you're working for a government agency or a non-profit you're not even gonna have billable hour requirements because you're not billing hours out to a client now if you could build for every single minute an hour you are at the office it would be really easy to figure out how long you would need to be in the office to hit those billable hours right because you could just take 2200 hours let's say divide it by 50 weeks so assuming two weeks of vacation and sick days and holidays and then divide that by five days per week and you would get eight point eight so eight point eight hours in the office every day but the reason that you can't just do that is because there are so many things going on at the office every single day that don't count as billable hours and those can be things anywhere from personal appointments phone calls doctor visits to things going on in the office like celebrating co-workers birthdays or in lunches to working on legal work that's not billable so maybe writing a law review article going to a CLE or bar event or working on a pro bono case and so because all of those things are happening during the day during the work day it's going to prevent you from actually billing a hundred percent of the time that you're at the office okay so talking about actual numbers how many hours do have to be in the office in order to bill for example 2200 hours per year and Yola actually made a chart of this to show you both 1800 billable hours a year and 2200 billable hours a year what that would look like in terms of office time and what they came up with was for 2,200 billable hours a year and associated would have to be in the office working 12 hours per day and 3 Saturdays per month and that would get you to your 2200 hours now one of the issues I have with a chart is that it assumes a lot of constants and work Florida law firm is anything but constant you're gonna have busy periods you're gonna have slow periods you're not gonna be able to walk into the office and bill 8.5 hours consistently every day throughout the entire year you're also not going to be taking a one-hour lunch break in a one-hour dinner break every single day either the other thing I don't love about the chart is that it nickels and dimes associates for non billable time throughout the day so it assumes a one-hour break for lunch a one-hour break for dinner for 15 minute bathroom and coffee breaks throughout the day and I feel very very strongly that associates should not be pressing stop on billable timers when you take what I call these short brain breaks and I actually talk a lot about this and how to bill your time as a law firm associate which I will link up here in the cards and how many hours per day you have to be in the office in order to hit those billable hours is going to depend on several different factors and those can include things like as a litigator you're generally going to have a more consistent workflow than you would as a corporate attorney for example because litigators have scheduling orders that are issued at the beginning of cases so when you walk into the office on any given day you generally have an idea of what you're gonna be working on whereas corporate attorneys still have to be at the office but might be sitting around for a few hours waiting on climate comments before they can really start getting going on their billable work for that day another factor is going to be the practice group that you're in at your firm because practice groups tend to be cyclical so some firms have stronger practice groups and others weaker practice groups and others and just nationwide practice groups can be either hot or slow and so what practice group you're in sort of the timing of that and the strength of the practice group at your firm is gonna determine how much billable work your practice group has and therefore how much billable work is going to be delegated to you another important factor is going to be you if you have built up a strong reputation for yourself as a capable attorney as a hard worker it's going to be so much easier to get partners to accept you on to their cases and to ask you back on to future cases if you don't if you're known as a slacker or a difficult person to work with of course it's going to be harder to convince partners to get you on to their cases and it's gonna be harder for you to find billable work so what I would say in terms of meeting at 2,200 billable hour requirement per year which by the way is on the higher end of law firms it's gonna look something more like working 11 hours per day in the office five days a week plus one Saturday per month and working 50 weeks per year and just to give you guys an idea of how much I billed per year I worked in a midsize litigation firm that focused on IP litigation in New York and in Dallas and the billable goals for associates was 2400 hours per year and the IP litigation at the time was very hot there were a ton of cases there were a ton of parties involved and I consistently build between twenty three hundred and twenty-five 50 I think hours per year when I told my friends how much I was billing they thought it was crazy they were billing closer to 2,000 2,200 hours per year and that was high that was considered very high as well but the truth of the matter is is that because we have so many cases and we had so many projects going on when I walked into the office I knew what I was working on all day I knew I could bill upwards to 90 95 percent of my day if I wanted to work through lunch and so even though I was billing more hours it was a less stressful work environment because I wasn't sitting around waiting for projects I didn't have to go searching for cases every moment I was at the office was a potential billable moment so really does matter the practice group you're in the firm where your work and if you can capitalize on the time that you're in the office or if a lot of that time winds up being dead time waiting for projects are waiting for client comments makes all the difference in the world that's it for this video I hope that gave you guys a better understanding of how billable hours translate into actual hours worked at the office of course if you have any other questions about billable hours about working as an attorney leave them in the comment section below and I'd be more than happy to share with you everything I know if you enjoyed the video give it a big thumbs up share it with someone you think would benefit from it and of course hit subscribe to see new videos every single Tuesday thank you guys for watching I'll see you in the next

Channel: Angela Vorpahl

Views: 58,154

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Id: Cd5jhQHYXJ4

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2019