Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I'm not a lawyer; but my understanding is that you bill for things that are being completed by support staff as well as what you complete. (ie. You could be sitting in a mediation on one file while your support staff completes letters and other tasks on other files.)
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In my practice, my assistants bill for their own time on select few projects. They bill at their own rate (substantially lower than mine) and none of it usually counts towards my budget. At least, that's the case for billing by the hour matters.
It should also be noted that for inexperienced counsel, getting in 8 billable hours a day rarely translates into an 8 hour day. In my own experience, being in the office for 2 hours nets about 1 billable hour. Whether that 1 hour is billed in its entirety (some could be written off) and whether any of the time billed actually gets paid are completely different matters altogether. Experienced lawyers become much more efficient to where the ratio of hours worked and hours billed approaches 1.