When I saw an article in the ABA Journal entitled “Lawyers are only billing a fraction of their time; how can they be more efficient?”, I thought the contents would be a reminder about the lack of discipline lawyers exhibit in recording their time. A lot of revenue is lost simply by failing to record time when it is allocated, failing to remember enough detail days later, and not having time registered when the billing lawyer creates the invoice.
But alas, that’s not what this article references at all. It is really going far deeper into the lack of awareness that many lawyers have as to how many hours they are billing, at what rates, and what they are actually realizing (based on what is collected on those billed hours).
Some day, lawyers will be billing with more sophistication than merely recording hours. In the meantime, for those many lawyers who are still married to the billable hour, this article is indeed good food for thought.