Archive for category: The practice

Have you ever received a legal bill?  It’s an interesting moment; all too often there’s a sharp intake of breath (it costs that much?), quickly followed by an investigation into why it costs so much.  What do you want your clients to find when they read your bills?

What you don’t want is pretty clear.
*  You don’t want them to wonder how much time your/your firm spent on a matter.
*  You don’t want them to wonder who did the work.
*  You don’t want them to wonder what each member of the team did on their case.
In other words, “For services rendered” will not be a phrase that pleases clients.

It’s standard to require attorneys and paralegals to keep time sheets that describe in detail what they’ve done.  The issue, though, is how well that standard is honored.  As you’re filling out your daily time sheet (because you do keep your time on a daily basis, right?  if not, visit Time sheet habits: don’t procrastinate  and New lawyer skills focus: Are you losing time? to find out why you should) consider the information value of your billing.

Block billing is easy to do, but very difficult for clients to interpret.  An entry like, “2.5 hours, reviewed documents and drafted/revised motion to compel ” will leave a client wondering how long each task required, and the client may not be pleased to find an entry the next day for more time on the motion to compel because she may expect that the 2.5 hours covered drafting the motion when in fact you only reviewed documents and drafted the motion but not the memorandum in support.  Block billing creates questions.  Instead, consider whether you want to indicate more precisely the amount of time you spent on each task, or whether it would be preferable to include multiple entries.

Although it’s essential to remember that your bills may be discoverable and that they must not include privileged information, consider how you may communicate the scope of your work without crossing the line.  So, for instance, you might include entries like, “Researched law re admissibility of [opposing party’s] statement in [brief] that [whatever].”

Errors happen, but do everything in your power to ensure that you bill the correct client for the work you’ve done.  Finding an entry that doesn’t pertain to your matter is a disheartening experience for the client, who may wonder what other mistakes you’re making.

In-house counsel often complains about reviewing attorney bills because they’re cryptic, not explicit, and sometimes just plain wrong. Draft your time sheets so that your clients know who did what, why, and when.

And a note: in case a new associate is reading this and thinking it’s inapplicable because you don’t get to review the bills that clients receive, remember that what goes into your time sheet is what goes into the bills.  Don’t allow yourself to slip into bad billing practices; that’s not a favor to the partners who review your time sheets or to your clients, and both will hold it against you.

In my experience, newer associates often have challenges in determining what they do and don’t have the authority to do.  Some may take on too little authority, undermining their usefulness to more senior lawyers who need not be consulted about every decision, and others may take on too much, possibly compromising strategic decisions that should be the senior lawyer’s call.

Senior lawyers bear much responsibility for these missteps, because they should have the foresight and ability to define what authority the lawyers they supervise may exercise.  However, all too often, everyone assumes that everyone is in agreement on what’s appropriate — right until the assumption comes crashing down in a rant of frustration at being disturbed yet again “for nothing” or a ballistic explosion at finding out that an incurable decision has been made without a full appreciation for its impact.

I’ve been reading a marvelous book recently: Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time, by Susan Scott.  In addition to setting forth a valuable approach to conversations that facilitate exploration of the truth and collaborative problem-solving, Scott sets out a Decision Tree that supervising lawyers can use to explain a junior lawyer’s scope of authority — quickly, simply, and in a framework that permits easy shorthand reference in the future.

Scott’s Decision Tree comprises 4 categories of decisions (quoted from page 119, Fierce Conversations):

Leaf Decisions: Make the decision.  Act on it.  Do not report the action you took.

Branch Decisions: Make the decision.  Act on it.  Report the action you took daily, weekly, or monthly.

Trunk Decisions: Make the decision.  Report your decision before you take action.

Root Decisions: Make the decision jointly, with input from many people.  These are the decisions that, if poorly made and implemented, could cause major harm to the organization.

It’s quickly apparent how these categories can be used in the practice setting.  In the context of litigation, for instance, a partner might identify deciding whether documents are relevant and thus to be produced as leaf decisions, deciding what witnesses to interview as branch decisions, preparing discovery requests as trunk decisions, and deciding whether to move for a temporary injunction as a root decision.  As the associate advances, more and more decisions will become leaf and branch decisions, which is a strong indication that the associate is becoming more skilled and thus merits more authority.

This same principle is useful in a wide variety of other settings.  Suppose, for example, that you had decided to embark on a marketing program, and you decided to mail firm literature to some unidentified people and to invite others to lunch, to accept some requests to speak at CLE meetings or to write articles, and to use your box seats at a sporting event to thank or to woo particular clients.  The Decision Tree formula would permit you to delegate this process to a large extent to your assistant by explaining which steps you want her to undertake on her own without reporting back (sending out the marketing materials to new contacts), which you want her to do and to let you know about (setting up lunches with those in a designated group), which you want her to filter and then check with you about (“I don’t think you’ll want to speak at these conferences, but client XYZ always attends this one, so you may want to consider that”), and which decisions require input from you and perhaps others (which clients and colleagues should be invited to the playoffs).

Think today about how you can use Scott’s Decision Tree to clarify your own scope of authority and that of others with whom you work.