"In my professional responsibility course, I tell the truth about what happens to lawyers who do not. "Lawyers who lie do not end well. They get in trouble with the State Bar, often losing their license, frequently winding up bankrupt, family life in shambles and sometimes going to jail," she observes.
Caution: Ethicists and judges may apply another term for "value billing": fraud. Charging for work that was not actually performed is unethical and improper. An inability to collect for such billings may be the least of the lawyer's worries if the lawyer's dishonesty is exposed. Minimum Time Increments.
Billing Two Clients for the Same Work Regardless of how many clients benefit from the work performed, it's unethical for lawyers to bill each client individually for the full time spent. To avoid double billing, attorneys should split the bill among the clients.
1) The legal software stopwatch The stopwatch is a tried and true means to track time. Most modern legal software systems provide this time-tracking feature. For example, if a lawyer opens a case file, there's usually a digital stopwatch they can click to begin tracking the time spent on a task.
Hourly billing creates a bad culture, focused almost exclusively on the convenience of the seller, not the customer. It is not how you purchase anything else in your life. You would not tolerate it for one minute if any other business tried to price this way. Hence, it is unethical, and unprofessional.
Ethical Billing Practices Depend on Your Honesty—and Accuracy. As a professional services provider, you should only charge for hours you've actually worked. In turn, your client should pay for that time.
Duplicate Payment? Here's How To Never Pay The Same Invoice TwiceRegularly review your vendor master files to remove duplicated vendors. ... Double check for miskeying and misreading. ... Control rush check requests. ... Don't pay from multiple source documents. ... Have a fixed invoicing methodology.More items...•
Block billing is the practice of listing a group of tasks in a block summary under a single time entry. For example: “Draft interrogatory requests; telephone conference with Dr. Brown re: expert report; summarize deposition of Mr. Smith; review and revise correspondence to opposing counsel. 7.3 hours.”
For example, if you want to reach a goal of 2,000 hours annually, you would need to bill for roughly 40 hours each week, or eight billable hours a day. You may not work exactly eight hours each day, but this breaks down what you should average in a day, week, and month to reach your annual goal.
It's not a complicated equation – the more hours you bill, the more revenue for the firm. Firms “average,” “target” or “minimum” stated billables typically range between 1700 and 2300, although informal networks often quote much higher numbers.
Billable hours are those hours worked that require compensation. In other words, they are the hours that you bill clients for and they pay directly.
Non-billable hours are hours that a law firm's client should not pay for. These include truly wise time investments such as continuing legal education, networking, and rainmaking, for example. Non-billable hours also include timekeeping (ouch), other administrative functions, and errands, for example.