Not the Witching Hour, the Billable Hour: Unraveling the Mysteries of Law Firm Billing

Are you a busy legal professional haunted by the specter of the billable hour, questioning what counts and unsure of how best to track your time? Do you live in fear (or maybe just mild concern) over billable hour missteps lurking around the corner?  

Here’s an opportunity to free yourself from this curse of confusion—read on to get a handle on what billable hours are and learn how to bill clients effectively for the hours you’ve put in. 

What is a billable hour? 

Billable hours are the time during which attorneys work on tasks related to clients’ cases. For firms that use hourly rates, clients are billed for this time by the hour.  

Billable hours are the basis of most legal fee calculations, and putting in enough billable hours is essential to the profitability of law firms—that’s why they generally seek to maximize the number of billable hours that associates and partners put in. Some firms have a billable rate for key support staff, such as paralegals. 

When you track billable hours correctly, you ensure that clients are charged appropriately for the services they receive and that the firm is compensated for all the work it completes for a client. (And even for firms who don’t bill by the hour, billable hours may still affect how attorneys determine fees for flat rate or subscription pricing.) 

What counts toward your billable hours? 

All tasks related to client cases should count toward your billable hours. This can include:  

• Legal research for a client’s case, including research into case law, statutes, regulations, and other information 
• Calling, emailing, or otherwise corresponding with a client 
• Court appearances, including hearings, trials, and mediation/arbitration sessions 
• Client meetings 
• Drafting legal documents like contracts and briefs 
• Legal strategy development, including work on legal arguments and litigation plans 

What doesn’t count toward your billable hours? 

These would be any work activities that aren’t directly related to clients’ cases (and so can’t be billed to clients), including: 

• Professional development activities like seminars, workshops, and courses 
• Administrative tasks like filing paperwork and organizing files 
• Answering internal emails 
• Meeting with members of your firm (unrelated to a client case—for instance, about firm operations) 
• Attending networking events 

Figuring out whether a task is billable or non-billable 

Although most of the time, it’s clear whether a work task is related to a client’s case and, therefore, billable, there might be times when it’s less obvious.  

When you’re uncertain, ask yourself these questions: 

• Was this task required for the case? 
• Did the task help to meet a client’s needs in some way? 
• Has the client pre-approved the task? 
• Was time spent on this task because it was necessary and not due to mistakes that could have been avoided? (In other words, if you make a mistake, the time you spend fixing it is non-billable, even if you’re working on a client’s case.) 

If the answer to these questions is “yes,” the work is generally billable.