This is welcome news to come from the employment firm. Since it clocks in just under 800 attorneys, its pioneering move will set an example for other firms to take a similar path. Maybe the practice of law will be about service again. Too late to dream?

Some people might describe the billable hour as the holy grail in the legal profession. Another word would be bane.

Measuring associate performance by slavishly totting up the number of billable hours increases workplace stress. In choosing law firms, your average client will likely be drawn in by the firm’s size and flashiness. But don’t confuse flashiness with client service.

Will Bill for Food

In fact, the billable hour is the direct antithesis of good client service. The billable hour – in most cases – implies that the work involved is not based on some specific outcome and thus, the incentive to produce quality work is thereby reduced. It encourages mediocrity.

Diminishing Returns

Billable hours are treated, erroneously, like fungible goods. A billable hour paradigm might be okay if human beings were super-human powers, immune from fatigue. But one hour done by an associate with five clients does not equal the hour of work done by an associate with 50 clients. Quality inevitably suffers.

But law firms have long fooled themselves into believing that this magical unit is something that remains constant no matter what the associate’s current workload.

In either case, associate evaluation “excellence” is not measured by focused excellent performance at all, but by mediocrity, skilfully spread. “Good enough” is the motto of the billable hour culture.

Related Resources:

  • The Millennial Lawyer And BigLaw Hunger Games (Forbes)
  • BigLaw 101: How to Keep Track of Billable Hours (FindLaw’s Greedy Associates)
  • Jackson Lewis Ditching Billable Hours for Associates (FindLaw’s Greedy Associates)
  • Real Alternatives to the Billable Hour (FindLaw’s Law Firm Management)

You Don’t Have To Solve This on Your Own – Get a Lawyer’s Help

Civil Rights

Block on Trump’s Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court

Criminal

Judges Can Release Secret Grand Jury Records

Politicians Can’t Block Voters on Facebook, Court Rules