If you are a lawyer in private practice what is you billing target?

[Blankscreen]

I work in a mid size regional firm and our billing target is 3.75x salary. Out team admin also time records on our files so takes some of our fees.

After another a year of not hitting target and not getting a pay rise I am thoroughly pissed off.

It feels like the only people that hit target are those that work free over time. I've raised this and been told that I just need to time record more.

Just interested to know what other people's experiences are.

Can you bullshit the time? Its the only way. Depends what area you are in though - are billing actual clients or is it fixed fee work or cfa work?

Oh dear god. You can get struck off for that.

Please find another profession 21ZIGGY.

It isn't the only way- do your job properly.

Here

Is it a time target (ie a number of hours) or a billing target eg £X thousand pounds?

Presumably recording more time won't help if you then can't bill that time.

There are no billing targets at the firm I work at, just time targets - X number of billable hours per year. Bonus is linked to that but you do have to be over about 106% of target to get one.

Well I've 'slowed down' but it is impossible to hit target.

We bill the clients so if go over the estimate I have to write it off anyway.

As a solicitor for 30 years I have always ‘worked free overtime’
Thought most people did this
Do make my targets

@Blankscreen - if you are giving your client an "estimate" rather than a fixed fee then once you get to 80% of that estimate and you think the job won't be done within it then presumably you need to have that discussion with the client and revise the estimate? Sometimes things just don't go smoothly and the job takes longer/is more complicated. It's perfectly reasonable in those circumstances to revise the estimate.

If you're not able to get the job done on any matter within the estimate then your estimates are too low.

I didnt say i do that. I work at a no target firm cos they know unachievable targets are just a way to justify no payrises or bonuses.

Edit to add i note you havent given any advice on how she can do it

Your grasp of English is very poor. Cos?

I'm not advising her she's said she won't do free over time, so be it.

Edit - I don't care if you do it or not don't ever tell anyone to create fake time records. That will cost someone their career.

Well this is where I'm caught between a rock and hard place. The market dictates that a job is only worth 'x'. If we charge more then over time we'll just lose clients (which has happened).

So the firm use the target a reason to not increase my pay.

I feel like 3.75 x is high. It used to be 3 in my old firm and wondered what other people have.

Wow. I cant use cos?? Tough crowd

Why so tetchy?

Dont tell me what i can or cant do.

I don't fake time records never would.

I don't do free over time as I work part time. It's seems the only people in my firm that hit target are those who work full time and do extra free over time.

Interestingly it's only women who work part time at my firm and I've suggested that their bonus indirectly discriminates against women (as none of us part timers ever hit target) and I basically got told that I'm wrong and I need to time record more.

What is your charge out rate compared to your salary? If that ratio would require more than 80% billable hours to hit 3.75x then they're being unreasonable. If not, then you are.

Can you explain what you mean.

I have to time record at least 80% of my day but they don't expect 100% recovery.

I work in commercial property so can't bill every minute of my life.

Are you optimising your time recording to ensure it’s not having to be written off by the partner? I know billing is a PITA but putting detailed narratives helps partners - they don’t want to be writing off time, it’s just about having enough information to justify it to the client. Sometimes though it’s out of your control, fee negotiations etc.

Sympathies though, I’m not a lawyer (in a LPM type role) and I know how demoralising it can be.

Yeah I'm just stuck in what feels like a dead end job.

I did a really good on a refinance recently but went massively over on time. It was justified and flagged to the client but £5k got written off

My boss wanted to keep the client happy, fine, but I'm the one not getting paid enough for the job I do.

Anyone with a salary multiple target? That they are happy to share?

Surveyor here (I know different job). When I was in private practice I had a similar target. I used to do lots of free overtime but never achieved above 3x salary in fees. Still a surveyor but in-house, not private practice. Much happier and better work life balance.

I’m surprised the admin staff are taking away your billable hours. We would usually only have to share with other fee earners so we would meet our targets by offloading a lot on to the secretaries. Impossible to meet targets doing it all yourself and junior staff will take even longer due to inexperience so it’s usually their hours that are written off rather than yours.

My understanding was that x3 was the standard, so 3.75 feels on the high side.

Your firm is either under quoting for the work or not doing work efficiently enough if there is a market rate they can't exceed.

Therefore spend less time on the jobs that are fixed fee or delegate to staff with a lower charge out rate or ditch that work as no point doing it at a loss. Some partners whilst good lawyers are simply not good businessmen!

Most firms do operate on a hours basis and as a part timer your time would be pro-rataed. So say a billable target of 1400 hours a year for a full timer it would be minus 280 per day you don't work.

3 isn't really normal unless you are at a very small firm.

Keep a note of things like this and use these examples to justify why you should still get a raise.

I have a salary multiple target. 3x my salary. If I'm to reach it, then I'd need to bill 80% of my hours at the firm target rate. If I bill the client a lower rate then I need to work more hours. This is pretty standard. I usually reach about 80-90% of my target.
I'm not a solicitor, but in a similar industry, and you cannot reach your targets without doing overtime. I spend multiple hours a day managing my team and obviously can't bill those hours. But it's sort of "anticipated" in the salary. If you want regular hours, then you need to look for a job at one of your clients. The pay is almost always lower though.

Slightly different as I'm an accountant, but very similar setup. I made the numbers work by doing more myself, i.e. minimising the time spent by admins, juniors, other fee earners, etc. I found that doing more stuff myself actually cut the total time costs (due to not having the wasted time of explaining, supervising, reviewing, correcting etc and I suspect sometimes they put more time down that they hadn't worked to cover longer breaks, over-running other jobs etc) - I even did a fair bit of typing myself. I gave quite a bit of thought before delegating some work to someone else which included my evaluation of how much "handover", supervision and review/correction I'd have to do! I know the management/owners were a bit put out by it as they preferred more staff involved for training/continuity etc., but I couldn't get the numbers to work otherwise and as I had autonomy over my client portfolio and was hitting targets (both for billing, write offs and client satisfaction), they couldn't really complain, other than the occasional "nudge" to use other staff more!

I did a bit of unpaid overtime, but it wasn't routine, it was more when there was a deadline when I'd do a bit at home in an evening or weekend, or stay at work a bit longer to finish a job. But I didn't regard it as "unpaid" as it usually led to me exceeding expectations in terms of billing etc so my bonus effectively was my "wage" for the unpaid overtime.

I also learned to use my time very wisely, i.e. I'd do "thinking" time outside working/billing hours if possible, i.e. on my commute, waiting time before meetings/courses, etc. "Thinking" time is entirely allowable billing time, it's certainly not fudging the time sheets, as you've got something tangible from it, especially if you're doing something like tax planning or business planning where there'd still be "thinking" time if you were sat at your desk in the office! Things like that can sometimes be forgotten meaning client is undercharged just because you weren't sat at your desk whilst thinking!

Completely disagree with pp who suggested padding your hours (and struggle to believe that a solicitor would suggest this as it’s liable to get you struck off as well as being bad business).

IME most lawyers under-record if anything, so do check that you are not doing that. If I had a penny for every time I’ve had to tell an associate not to mentally write off their wine at time-recording stage, I wouldn’t have to worry about billing. Record everything scrupulously and add a note suggesting it’s written off later if you think that’s appropriate, but record it. Otherwise it’s impossible for people to know what you’re doing and where the firm is making money.

Would add to this that I don’t know any firm with billing targets that doesn’t have an unwritten expectation that you’ll do unpaid overtime.