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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone Scott Benton here, how are you? I’m the host of the classroom 2 courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. Now today, we’re going to talk about why you’re not hitting your minimum billable hours.
[00:00:26] Scott Benton: Why you’re not hitting them.
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[00:01:16] Scott Benton: So for context, if you work in a probate law firm like the firm I work for, there are a certain number of billable hours you’re responsible for everyday. Sometimes it’s measured during a billing period. A billing period might be over a week or maybe two weeks, and you’ve got to hit a total number of hours inside of that billing period.
[00:01:36] Scott Benton: So you might come in light one day and then you absolutely crush it the next day. And In the end of the billing period, it’s just all going to balance out so you’re going to reach your minimum. Hopefully, you will with this episode, but the point is that you’ve got this billable hour goal that you’ve got to hit and at some firms, it’s going to be a higher goal than others, but no matter whatever it is, [00:02:00] you’ve got to reach that minimum billable hour goal.
[00:02:03] Scott Benton: That is your job. That’s your job as an attorney. Now, sometimes it’s going to look easy. Sometimes when people tell you’ve got to hit this many hours in the day or in the week, it looks like, yeah, no problem. But when you start your first job as an attorney, you might think that delivering those billable hours every day is just not going to be that hard.
[00:02:25] Scott Benton: But then you get into it, and you realize you’re going to have to really build up to that minimum. You’re not hitting your minimums right off the bat. In fact, it’s probably going to take maybe a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, maybe a month until you finally are able to reach that minimum on a consistent basis.
[00:02:43] Scott Benton: And then from that point forward, the goal, of course, becomes to exceed your minimum billable hours. So you’ve got to reach and then exceed your minimum billable hours. Now, billable hours are generally defined as the tasks that you complete. [00:03:00] on what we talk about in this podcast, the success cycle.
[00:03:03] Scott Benton: Now, the success cycle has three parts. There’s the to do list. And then from the to do list, you’re going to perform those legal services. Those are all the tasks that you list out. And once the task is done, you bill for your time. And that’s how you chip away at your minimum billable hourly requirement.
[00:03:19] Scott Benton: You make a to do list, and then one by one you perform those tasks, and then you bill for your time, you get paid, and you start all over again. Now, on our success cycle diagram, it doesn’t say to do list, does it? It says G sheets. But, G sheets is the same thing as a to do list. That’s a term that we use at the firm that I work for.
[00:03:39] Scott Benton: It translates into to do list. G sheets simply stands for get it done. Get it done sheet or a to do list. So those are the same things are synonymous. But there’s something that happens with some attorneys, and they don’t hit their minimum billable hourly requirement. And this might happen day after day and week after week, and they come in [00:04:00] just under their minimums. They don’t quite get there.
[00:04:03] Scott Benton: And that’s just simply not going to sustain a law firm. It’s not going to sustain your job as an attorney. The firm cannot afford to keep you employed if you’re always under your minimum. Remember, the goal is to reach your minimum and exceed the minimum. You want to keep in mind that a law firm is a business.
[00:04:22] Scott Benton: And a business is in business to make a profit. So your minimum billable hours are there For simply to make sure that the firm is breaking even, that it’s going to survive. To make a profit, you need to exceed those minimums, which is also going to put more money in your own pocket, ultimately. If you’re not reaching those minimum billable hours, you’ve got to correct that immediately.
[00:04:46] Scott Benton: And if we look at why you’re not reaching your minimums, it’s usually a problem that comes up before the to do list on the success cycle is even considered. It’s not even making it to the success cycle yet, because there’s this whole other [00:05:00] piece in that process. So if you’re not making your minimums, it most likely means that you’re not utilizing your attorney notes as a way to organize your cases.
[00:05:10] Scott Benton: And therefore you’re not able to keep your to do list really all that populated. It’s empty. It’s probably even a little disorganized what’s on there. But if your to do list is empty or if it’s light or disorganized, it means you’re spending a lot of time. You’re wasting a lot of time. Really.
[00:05:27] Scott Benton: Figuring out what to do next on your cases, which is not really billable because you’re sitting there not really doing anything. So your pipeline is completely clogged up like bad plumbing, or at the very least, your to do list needs to be streamlined somehow. You get into a position where you just don’t know what to do.
[00:05:47] Scott Benton: Now you do all of that. With your attorney notes, you do that by making sure you have a separate document for each case that you have, and that document is called attorney notes, and you [00:06:00] write everything possible down about the case in those attorney notes, and then whenever something new comes along, whenever there’s a new development, or you just maybe file an 850 petition, you’re going to go to those attorney notes, you’re going to date and time stamp that entry, and you’re going to summarize what happened.
[00:06:16] Scott Benton: That new event is going to get essentially recorded like a journal for the case or, like a diary for the case. It’s going to be a chronology eventually of everything that’s happened. So we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about attorney notes because it’s really what feeds the entire machinery of the success cycle.
[00:06:36] Scott Benton: And the success cycle is what this entire podcast is built around. Now remember, those attorney notes never go to the client at any point in time. So you’re essentially free to say anything that you want to say.
[00:06:49] Scott Benton: Once you have your attorney notes done on a case, that’s when you see what needs to go on the to do list. And from the to do list, you now have an endless amount of legal [00:07:00] tasks and legal services that you can perform and that you can bill for.
[00:07:03] Scott Benton: Now, if you do that for, let’s say, 30 cases that you’re handling, you can very quickly see you’re going to have an endless list of tasks to complete that are going to make sure that you not only are reaching your minimum billable hour requirement every day, but that you’re also greatly exceeding it. And that’s going to make you a very successful attorney over the entire duration of your career.
[00:07:27] Scott Benton: If you can get yourself to that point.
[00:07:29] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s been helpful. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Now if this podcast is material that you like and you want to get notified whenever we post a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom2courtroom.
[00:07:44] Scott Benton: com. That’s classroom, the number two, courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. We’ll send you an email anytime we post a new episode. You can also stay on top of all of our new episodes by sharing, liking, and subscribing wherever you find this podcast. And until the next [00:08:00] episode, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time
[00:08:05] Scott Benton: thank you so much.
