The Grace Period: Shining A Light on Lawyer Wellbeing
The Grace Period: Shining A Light on Lawyer Wellbeing
Episode 24: Building Better Billing Habits
Unlock the secrets to mastering the billable and time entry without losing your mind. Discover a new mindset that can transform your approach to time management in the high-stakes world of big law. As your host, Emily Logan Stedman, I share personal insights and experiences on building sustainable habits for tracking time in real-time, minimizing chaos, and reducing anxiety., around the billable hour. This episode delves into the often-overlooked (or begrudged) skill of daily time entry, providing you with practical strategies not taught in law school but crucial for thriving in private practice.
Join me as we explore the complexities of the billable hour and its impact on attorney mental health. I'll share my journey in reshaping how I view time tracking and offer a fresh perspective on letting go of negativity surrounding the billable hour. Shift your mindset with me and embrace a practice that prioritizes mental well-being while still meeting the demands of the profession. Whether you're a seasoned lawyer or just starting your legal career, the insights shared here are designed to help you find your grace period amidst the pressures of billable hour requirements.
Find out more at https://thegraceperiod.substack.com/.
Welcome to the Grace Period where we get real about attorney mental health and well-being and pull back the veil on the high-stakes world of big law. I'm your host, emily Logan Stedman. In this demanding profession, it is crucial that we don't lose ourselves in the hustle for billable hours. On the Grace Period, we have honest conversations about finding consistency, minimizing chaos, developing coping strategies and de-stigmatizing mental health. It is time to prioritize our shared humanity to find our grace period. So far this season on the grace period, I've talked about the partner track, reflected on my first year as partner and explained a little about how I regroup after losing focus or motivation. This week we'll talk about billing habits. I want to pause here to say I'm recording this at home and my youngest puppy, oxford he's a almost three-year-old English Bulldog is whining outside my office door. So if you hear him, please know that he is not being ignored. He just doesn't like to be sequestered, sectioned off from where I am. So this episode will build on episodes two and three of the grace period from back on season one, where I defined the billable hour and talked about tracking the billable hour. You should check out those episodes if you haven't already Today. I'll start with a quick primer. The billable hour is how attorneys get paid. Yes, there are what we call alternative fee arrangements contingency fees, for example but even then, most of us are still billing our time, example. But even then, most of us are still billing our time, tracking what we do day in and day out, in six-minute increments, 0.1s or tenths of an hour, 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, and the hour six minutes at a time. You can see episode two for more on how we define the billable hour From there.
Speaker 1:Most firms, especially big ones, require their attorneys and even their paralegals to bill a certain number of hours each year in order to potentially be eligible for raises, bonuses and promotions. In episode three, I talked about how to break down your hours requirement into manageable daily, weekly and monthly goals. Today I want to share a little bit more about my personal billing habits, how I built a sustainable habit, system and routine around time tracking and daily time entry. This is one of those skills that they don't teach you in law school, but if you enter private practice, this habit can really make or break your sanity and again, potentially, your raises, bonuses and promotions. The billable hour is the foundation of how most law firms track and bill their work. Each hour of qualifying work is recorded in tenths of an hour with what we call billing narratives.
Speaker 1:That's the explanation or summary of what you did and why you did it. It sounds simple, but it's often challenging. Why? Because it requires you to track everything you're doing, which is not intuitive and it's not human nature. But you can make it second nature.
Speaker 1:How the best practice is to track your work and time as you move through your day, as you go from task to task Again, easy to describe, but not always easy in practice. I know this because most attorneys don't do this. The traditional method, or most common method is to get to the end of the day, some people the end of the week or month, yes, even once a month and look back at your calendar, your sent emails and try to reconstruct your days and time. I'll be honest here I think that's silly. I think it's actually much more time consuming than doing it in real time as you go. Reconstructing your time days or weeks later is not only stressful, but it's also often inaccurate. You either undercount your time, which hurts both you and your firm, or you overcount, which is potentially unethical, plus having that backlog of unrecorded time hanging over your head. I don't want or need that added anxiety. It's already a demanding enough profession.
Speaker 1:So here's what I do. First, it's about your mindset. Acknowledge where you are. Maybe you try to reconstruct your days, weeks or months in hindsight. That's okay. Starting today, you can work to change that.
Speaker 1:Next, let go of the negativity around the billable hour. It's onerous. It should not be used as a measure of productivity or worth and, yes, it is not going anywhere. So instead of treating it like a boogeyman, letting it control you, your mood, think of it as an administrative task, not a burden, but part of your job. Billing your time is like clocking in and out. It's a simple job requirement, nothing more, nothing less. From there you can start thinking about it more positively, more productively. Billing our time is an integral part of our practice. It's as important as the actual work we do. That sounds crazy, but it's true. Why? Because it's how we get paid.
Speaker 1:So, once you've adjusted your mindset, second, build a system. I'll tell you my system and I'll mention things that have worked for me and worked for others and maybe not worked for me. But you have to take what you hear from me experiment and make it your own. It is not one size fits all your own. It is not one size fits all. The system has to be yours, wholly yours, or it won't work and you won't stick with it. So here's my system.
Speaker 1:I start with a to-do list. I have a perpetual to-do list that is now digital In good notes on my iPad. At the close of each business day, I write down what tomorrow's tasks are. If there's a lot and I'm struggling to keep track, I'll prioritize them. Stars might denote deadlines for that day. I might rank them using numbers to guide the order in which I do things. This is also my time sheet and I'll link to it in the show notes. But this to-do list, this time sheet, has a space for me to write down the required action items, which becomes my billing narrative. It includes the matter or case name and space to write down my start and stop time for every task. Because, that's right, I am constantly watching the clock In the beginning.
Speaker 1:Wear a watch, yes, you can use your phone, you can use your laptop, but for a whole host of reasons, phones, even Apple watches they're a distraction magnet waiting to get you. So wear a traditional watch when you start a new task, write down the time. When you finish a task, write down the time To start. You should do this for absolutely everything you do during your day, even non-billable, even going to the bathroom, pausing for lunch, pausing to scroll TikTok. Why? Because you want to build the habit. You want tracking your time to become second nature. I talked about non-billable time back in episode three, but you should, no matter what, even once you have the habit, down, bill and track all of your work-related time to clients, to your firm, to your career, to personal and professional development. You want to show the firm you're invested in your future. A note here about legal tech Most firms will have a system for tracking time that includes digital timers.
Speaker 1:You can start and stop them, assign them to case and matter numbers and track that way. Experiment with that. It'll work wonders for some of you. Me, I hated timers. I could never remember to turn them off, so they ran and ran and ran, and I was doing that reconstruction in hindsight. So I came up with my own system. Again, this is easy to talk about. It might even sound simple, but making this an absolute habit, an absolute rule for your professional life, is critical.
Speaker 1:Since May of 2016, almost nine years in, I have trained myself to switch between tasks by writing down my start and stop times. It is now second nature. But, emily, what about interruptions? Sure, interruptions are inevitable. Colleague stops by with a question about a matter that's not the one I'm working on. What do I do? I immediately check the clock and write down the time. Quick email check track, phone call track. The key is making the tracking action Eventually, you won't think about it, you'll just do it Now. You've tracked your time all day. Then what? Let's talk about daily time entry.
Speaker 1:Every day, almost every day, I enter my time before I leave the office. This is a non-negotiable for me. I do not feel like I've completed my day and can separate from work and be present outside of work unless I've entered my time. I can literally feel it hanging over me. So I've built a closing routine. I block out the last 15 to 30 minutes of my day for this task. My calendar literally has a daily appointment called buffer time that accounts for my transition from working time to billing time, preparing for tomorrow and transitioning into whatever I have going on after work. This makes me think that maybe I should have an episode on utilizing your calendar more effectively. I should plan a later episode around that, because I'm not someone who relied on a digital calendar in the beginning. That's come with time as well. On a digital calendar in the beginning, that's come with time as well.
Speaker 1:Back to time entry. As part of my closing ritual, I look at my time sheet, add up the time and enter my time. In our firm system I don't just enter the case name and matter number and the 0.2 or 1.2 that I spent on the matter, I also write in the narrative describing what I did that day. What if I didn't finish the task though? I put it on tomorrow's to-do list. Follow-up tasks that resulted from today's work. They go on tomorrow's to-do list.
Speaker 1:It's a perpetual cycle that keeps things moving forward, keeps my hours tracked, billed and entered every day. Note some days I have to rush out of the office and I don't get to enter my time. That's fine. I enter it the first thing the next morning when I'm preparing to start work, when I fall behind because life happens. Catching up is my highest priority, not because anyone's pressuring me, but because if it slides, that just creates more stress and again leads to inaccurate billing. Ultimately.
Speaker 1:Here's why all of this matters. First, your billing narratives are better when they work. When the work is fresh in your mind, you can be more specific about what you did and why you did it. Clients want to know you're adding value. Entering time in real time improves billing accuracy and helps the bills get paid rather than questioned and even potentially rejected. It also frees up the billing attorney. You enter your time, it goes on a bill. Another attorney, often a senior partner, is reviewing that bill and reviewing every single time entry before it goes out to the client. If you take your part of this process seriously, that billing attorney learns to trust you and your time entries and doesn't have to spend hours editing the bills before sending them to clients.
Speaker 1:Second, this habit plays a huge role in my well-being when it comes to work. I start each day with a clean slate. I don't have backlog, no Sunday afternoon time entry sessions. I'm not worried about getting fined because, yes, a lot of firms fine you if your time entries are late. I don't have the constant mental burden of knowing or thinking that I'm behind on my hours or my time entry. Building a system and a habit helps you avoid these consequences. If you're interested in starting this habit and building it and creating it. Start small, commit to entering your time. Just maybe at lunch you enter your morning time and then after a week, you enter the full day's time. The goal isn't perfection, it's progress. It's moving towards a sustainable practice, towards a non-negotiable and automatic habit.
Speaker 1:Looking back, developing these habits was one of the best investments I've made in my career. It's reduced my stress, improved my billing accuracy and given me better control over my practice. Plus, it's made me a lot more mindful about how I spend my time. Most time management experts tell you to track what you're doing every day so you can see in real time what you're doing with your time. The billable hour is a way to do that. It is a way to see how you're spending your time, make adjustments and make better use of your time. All of this improves my productivity, my time management and my work-life boundaries. Many people come at the billable hour without a plan. What that means is they're just surviving. But you can find sustainability in this profession and you can make the billable hour something that you just don't have to think about as much. These small habits like consistent time tracking and billing can make the biggest difference in making the career sustainable for the long haul.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Grace Period. I hope this discussion has provided some insights about building billing habits and taking the power away from big laws. Bogeyman the billable hour. Next week we'll talk about my journey to embracing the identity of being a businesswoman. Talk about my journey to embracing the identity of being a businesswoman. Remember you don't have to sacrifice your well-being for career success. By prioritizing self-care, setting boundaries and seeking support, you can survive and even thrive in the law and in big law. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. That is the path to our grace period. Disclaimer this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute professional advice of any kind, including legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by listening to this podcast.
