| Topic Name: |
only 2000 hours?? |
| Message Name: |
hours |
| Date Posted: |
12/29/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
Okay, so everyone bitches about the crazy hours workers have to work. But if you only have to "work" 2000 hours, isn't that on average 40 hours of "hell" a week?
Of course, there could be 20-40 hours of week of non-billable time, but is non-billable time stressful at all? i mean, lunch/dinner/playing minesweeper/using the restroom. isn't that bad. granted you'd rather be home, but for the lawyer who bills 2000 hours, he only entails 40 hours a week of misery, right?
i guess a better question to ask is: what comprises an associates non-billable hours? are non billable hours miserable, or just boring? thanks. |
| Message: |
For a young associate, even if one works hard,the ratio of hours worked to hours billed is usually at least
1.3 to 1.5 to 1. Some work is easy to bill--summarizing a deposition comes to mind, where there is little "time lost". Other work, such as jumping back and forth among numerous files, is hard to bill efficiently. In addition to the excess time it takes to bill matters,
non-billables such as firm stuff, etc. is frequently less stressful but nonetheless a time drag.
40 properly billed hours a week usually translates to
52 to 60 of work to which you add the "non-misery" firm stuff. BTW, at most firms, that 2000 is not 2000. It's 2000, but if you reallly want to make partner, 2400.
I contend that the actual law practice is not really miserable at all, but the firm/office stuff is the real "misery work". My key point, though, is that a 2,000 hour billable requirement does not mean you will work 2,000 hours. You will work much more than that, at least until you figure out how to work efficiently.
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