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.

Is this your only bonus target? Because I have multiple targets, the billables are always the hardest to reach, but it only counts for 30% of my total bonus.

I’m a commercial property lawyer outside of London. My billable target is about 3.6 times my salary. My chargeable hours target is about 5 hours a day. My realisation is close to 100%. I work 4.5 days a week but invariably work more than this.

I would press on the indirect discrimination point as you are quite right. I also son't think it is right that your boss disregards billing he/she writes off.

Not sure what your salary is but have you thought about moving to an inhouse position?

Yep the only number that matters for the bonus is the billing target.

I get excellent appraisals and client feedback.

In the example of the £5k write off I made a point of asking for an internal credit but was told that that isn't an option.

Minimum expected at my firm is 3 x your salary. I've always understood (from things such as training on how law firm finances work) that you need to be billing 3 x your salary just to essentially justify being employed! As unfortunately there are so many costs of a law firm that only the legal work done by fee earners pays for- basically all the work done has to pay for the salaries of fee earners plus support staff, lighting, rent, cleaning etc. So the minimum is 3 x salary..
Bonuses at my firm are then paid at a (crap) percentage of your salary based on how much extra you bill, it only starts on 3.5 x your salary. So the "fees" element of your bonus is only going to be paid if you bill at least 3.5x your salary. And they change it slightly often every year but its usually something like if you bill 3.5x your salary you get a 3% (of your salary) bonus, if you bill 4x your salary you get a 3.5% (of your salary) bonus and so on..

We also get a proportion of your bonus for how many chargeable hours are recorded and this starts when you record 6 chargeable hours a day (so even if you're time is written off so much that you don't get much fees or the element mentioned above then you could get this) but again this is something rubbish like 2% of your salary...as you'll know its v hard to do 6 out of 7 purely chargeable hours a day if you're just working your hours. This element goes up to something like 9 chargeable hours so CLEARLY indicates that they expect us to do unpaid overtime!

The final element is "wider contribution" and is something similarly low like 2%...if you do anything else that helps the firm such as bringing in loads of new clients or raising money for charity or being on firm committees..

Also just to add I agree that all firms expect unpaid overtime! My contract even has something about how I may be expected to work hours in addition to my fixed hours depending on client need or something.

Source - fee earner at London City firm.

I've never had a salary multiple target. Always billable hours target.

It's not discriminatory because working "free overtime" is nothing to do with PT v FT.

You can still stay late/ do extra hours if you're wanting a bonus or pay rise.

I think your base target should ideally be achievable within your working hours, but for bonuses & pay rises I don't see the problem with choosing those people who work extra for them.

Law is one of those areas where it's a professional, salaried job & not really an hourly thing. If you're in a regional firm, working until 5:30/6 is quite normal + in a top city firm, later than that. Yeah you can call it "free overtime" but at the end of the day, if everyone stopped doing that, they'd have to pay less as the bills coming in would be less.
It's more of a give & take in law IME.

Only advice I really have is speak to your manager about how you want to improve & if you feel like you don't want to work longer hours for the extra ££, then find a different firm?

To answer your actual question though, roughly IME for junior solicitors on £40-50k, target is £180k-£220k ish. For more senior staff without management responsibilities on £50-60k, maybe £250-300k ish depending on department etc.

I average about 3.4 salary. So never get a payrise and never get a bonus. Totally crap

I think "free overtime" is expected and wrapped up in the salary package? It's why I moved in house!

OP if you feel underpaid, could you look for another role elsewhere?

I've also heard that 3x your salary "justifies your existence" so to speak (unless you have significant non billing responsibilities etc!) so really to be getting bonuses or pay rises etc I'd expect 3.5- 3.75%

If the work is there, could you do an extra half an hour or so a day?

I guess I value my 'life' more than my 'work' and work part time as have child care responsibilities.
I probably work an extra 1/2 hr a day but any more and it makes a mockery of working part time.
My point really isn't about bonus but just that my target doesn't feel achievable if you 'just' work your hours so wondering what targets other people have.

@Blankscreen I totally understand where you're coming from, but IME the full timers also overwork proportionally so it kind of all comes out in the wash. Law isn't really a "work your hours" kind of job if you want to excel

I've have raised it and said 'i don't know what more I can do to hit my target' and I get told to time record more.

What’s your actual target in hours or amount @Blankscreen? Our targets do not go up or down based on our salary.

We don't have billing targets we have hours targets. Chargeable hours expected per day is just over 6. Total hours just over 8. Billing then just flows from that. I work part time but I'm still expected to hit these daily targets, which of course include 'overtime' as you put it, but which is totally par for the course in law. I don't know any successful lawyers who work 9-5.

But it does sound like there are issues with what you can charge and recovery rate. If you can't do a job without writing off huge amounts you shouldn't be doing that work. I appreciate you may not have a choice depending on your level of seniority but if a client doesn't like the fees I charge I don't take the work.

3x my salary with a 25% bonus for everything over that.
I don’t have a time target, and only fee earners (including paralegals) record time against files so they’ll only get credit from my bills if they’ve actually worked on the file, which is fair enough. Equally if I cover files while someone’s on holiday I’ll end up with something on their bill. We just look at the time summaries and apportion the final bill accordingly.

Also I meant to add, I recently got it reduced to 3x from 3.5x because the way our department works with file sharing and me training a trainee it was near impossible to hit so no salary review or bonus.

Can I just say, reading about all these lawyers who aren't getting salary increases or bonuses because of not hitting targets, it totally doesn't have to be like this. So many firms aren't like this - I have rarely met time targets in my career yet haven't missed out on salary increases or bonuses. Employers should not be treating their staff like this, it's not the norm and if you can I would urge you to look for a firm that treats you with more respect.

Absolutely agree with your approach to life and work but I suspect this is why you aren’t being recognised by your firm, it is not what most law firms want from their fee earners. it’s not necessarily healthy but many lawyers wouldn’t see part time workers as committed and those who only work their hours and never any more would be overlooked for bonuses or promotion. I’m sure this may be less of an issue in regional firms but I don’t know many city firms that are going to reward you above and beyond your salary when you don’t go above and beyond yourself?

I do go above and beyond when necessary but I don't work overtime as matter of routine.

Would add to this thread that I’d generally expect bonuses and pay rises to be dealt with separately. Not getting a bonus because you didn’t hit your target is one thing. Not getting a pay rise (and therefore in effect getting a large real terms pay cut) is quite another.

The old rule of thumb was 3x (one third for your salary, one third for firm overheads (office, IT, secretary, etc) and one third for the partner pot) but I think a lot of firms are moving on from that.

Unpaid overtime is definitely the norm in private practice. You have as much opportunity to do it as your full time colleagues. That doesn't mean it is a good thing but it is standard.

When I was in PP I always had an annual billable hours target. I think as an associate1800 was the worst (with 2000+ expected overall). That was at a US firm. There are higher targets around now. All law firms are pushing finances hard.

Even without meeting targets I still got annual pay increases though - the targets were just the boundary for bonuses. But at the firms I was at people who didn't meet targets more than occasionally didn't stick around for long.

@Blankscreen I would suggest you get absolutely BRUTAL about your time recording. Make sure you record every single unit. Use your timers and put it ALL down. That is what your line manager has told you to do, so do it. And if that makes no difference (maybe review at 3/6 months) then you can have another discussion about it and what else you can be doing.

This - a generous bonus system is our reward for hitting our target, our salary is linked to inflation and seniority (so a bigger pay increase if you move up the management chain for example)

I don’t know any lawyers who refer to ‘over time’ if I’m honest: I don’t know any one working at a law firm who is only working ‘their hours’ like that. They don’t see working over as ‘over time’ it’s just a given in law. Most will be clocking back on once the kids are down or working on holidays etc. it’s super toxic and not a great way to live life but is what most law firms are life. I imagine your observance of ‘your hours’ is why you aren’t getting a bonus but seriously, is it worth it !?