Time Recording and Meeting Billable Targets - A Guide for Support Staff and Junior Lawyers
Despite an often common dislike for the practice, most law firms continue to use billable hours as a way of charging clients and tracking the work undertaken by their legal staff including, in some firms, their support staff.
Properly recording time and meeting billable targets is a fine art that will need to be mastered early on in your job. Whilst each firm’s billing practices vary, this article outlines a number of best practices for time recording generally, aimed at junior lawyers and support staff to assist them in accurately and efficiently recording time and meeting billable targets.
Record everything (and the reasonable exceptions to that rule)
To practice getting into good billing habits, it may assist to start recording all work that you undertake on a day to day basis, including recording your non-chargeable work into an administration matter. By being accountable for every single moment of your day, it will make you think more closely about what you are recording, ensuring that no billable work gets missed. It might also assist to print your full timesheet out for your supervising Solicitor’s review on the first couple of occasions to ensure that you are not writing off tasks as unbillable when in fact they can be billed to a client.
As a junior solicitor or support staff, you should avoid discounting or writing down your own time. Your supervising Solicitor should be the one to decide how much of your time actually gets charged to the client.
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule and tasks that you should absolutely not charge to the client. These will vary from firm to firm and you should check this with your supervising Solicitor, however they will generally include any correspondence or phone calls in relation to costs or complaints, speaking with clients simply to make appointments, and strictly administrative work such as putting filing on files and splitting folders.
Record as you go and submit at the end of each day
The most efficient and accurate way of entering time is to do so as you complete each task. If you are very busy you may be tempted to enter your time at the end of the day, however this is not only inefficient but risks a lot of incidental work being missed when you are reflecting on the day and cannot remember each minor task that you undertook.
Delegate work
If possible, you should delegate non-billable and admin work to more junior staff. For junior Solicitors this could mean a PA. If you are a PA yourself, you may have more limited options for delegating non-billable work, but your admin assistant or receptionist may have capacity and be willing to assist with non-chargeable work such as opening files or splitting folders. You should, however, always remember to check with your supervising Solicitor and/or Partner when delegating work to staff resources that aren’t specifically allocated to you.
Discuss your time recording and billable targets with your supervisor/s
You should always discuss your time recording and billable targets with your supervising Solicitor/s.
You should check that you are charging for everything that you should be and always ask your supervisor if you are unsure if or how much to charge for a certain task.
As more junior staff members, you will usually not be generating your own work and will instead be allocated work from your supervising Solicitor/s and other senior staff members. You should therefore let your supervising Solicitor/s know where you are at with your billable targets and ask them if they have any extra work they might be able to assign to you to ensure that you are meeting same.
Avoid procrastination and distractions, especially when you are meeting or exceeding budget.
It may be easy to procrastinate or allow distractions to enter your day, especially when you are already meeting or ahead of budget! However, you should remember that any procrastination or unnecessary distractions can eat into your time and you should always anticipate quieter periods and periods of leave when you may not meet your budget on a week by week or month to month basis. The less time that you spend on needless procrastination and distractions, the less likely it is that you will be spending more hours in the office to try to meet budget at the end of the month or end of the year.
Include short descriptions in your time entries.
You should include short descriptions in your time entries detailing what the task you were undertaking was in relation to (i.e. “letter to other party re disclosure” rather than “letter to other party”). By including a short description, you demonstrate to both the client and your supervising Solicitor/s why the task was chargeable and should actually be billed to the client for the length of time that you charged and not written off or written down.
On that note, expect your time to be written down.
Typically, junior Solicitors and support staff do not have as demanding budgets as more senior members of staff. As a result, even if you are following your firm’s billing procedure and the best practices outlined above, you can probably expect that some of your time will be written down and written off at the billing stage. Typically, you should allow a 10% leeway between what you record and what will actually be billed to the client.
Finally, remember that practice makes perfect.
As frustrating as the process may be when you first start, the longer that you spend time recording and meeting billable targets, the more comfortable you will become with it. Good luck!
