This seems miniscule and unimportant, but what does it really mean? One hour “on the clock” breaks down into 10 six-minute standard billing increments, making the shortest time possible to perform a task six minutes. Most law firms have their attorneys bill time in one-tenth hour increments, with the smallest time increment possible at 0.10-hour. With this pressure to perform coupled with the elusive dream of some semblance of work-life balance, many honest lawyers are surprised to find themselves engaging in billing practices they never could have predicted.īefore we begin feeling too sorry for the lawyer, however, let’s take a look at one particular way in which the billable hour is designed to aid the lawyer in achieving these large quotas – the billing increment. Temptation abounds, however, when one considers that most law firms require their attorneys to log on average 2,000+ billed hours per year, not including any time spent on administrative matters, pro bono work, CLEs, committee obligations, and so on. The lay client must rely on its lawyer not only to accurately document his or her time spent on a particular task, but to perform only those tasks that are actually necessary or helpful to the matter at hand. Lawyers’ billing practices have long been criticized for their tendency to be exaggerated, “guesstimated,” and sometimes blatantly padded. Within a single billing increment lurks a tricky truth that many who deal with lawyers and their billing practices are unaware.
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