Comments on: Measuring lawyer productivity

By: Gary Luftspring

Gary Luftspring — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:58:23 +0000

Jordan, the billable hour will still have to be tracked by litigators in jurisdictions where costs are awarded. At least in Canada costs are awarded on the basis of time spent and hourly rates. Even in class action proceedings where a % arrangement is in place the court has supervisory jurisdiction and will use the time to measure reasonableness on the basis of what multiple of time is being requested. Courts have developed elaborate rules in order to monitor the reasonableness of the time for particular tasks but nonetheless docekted time is for the most part accepted as legitimate and appropriate as a starting point for cost assessment.

Moreover I agree with Doug. Even in professions where there is a long history of fixed fees such as engineering and architecture, they track time in order to measure their own efficiency and as a tool to coming up with the appropriate fixed fee. The measuring of how long things take to do efficiently will always be an important component of pricing a service. The problem that will arise is that for a number of tasks the cost of delivering that service even efficiently in a particular jurisdiction will be out of whack with the price for which the service can be provided elsewhere. Welcome to globalization of the profession.

By: Allison Shields

Allison Shields — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:53:15 +0000

Great article, Jordan!

I don’t agree with the previous commenter that contemporaneous time records are the best way to show that you did work for a client or responded adequately to discovery demands from opposing counsel. After all, there should be telephone calls/messages, emails, letters, notes and other documents that would be evidence that work was performed.

Whether you have devoted ’sufficient attention’ to a client’s matter isn’t a function of the number of hours billed, nor do I believe that a client cares about the time records. Clients who question whether you’ve devoted sufficient attention to their matter aren’t questioning your time keeping – they’re questioning your performance and/or the outcome, which means you’ve fallen short in some other way, failed to implement effective client selection procedures, or failed to maintain the relationship properly.

It’s time lawyers stop using time as a measure of value and timesheets as a management tool. I posted on these issues some time ago in “Are Timesheets Really an Effective Management Tool?” and and “Do You Need Timesheets to Determine Profitability?”here: http://bit.ly/nkc4R and here: http://bit.ly/vldkh

By: Martha

Martha — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:25:12 +0000

I love Jay Shephard’s admonition to take an accounting class and a management class and I think he really hits the proverbial nail right where it lives: there are more efficient and profitable ways to track efficiencies and profitability than the traditional law firm model. The old methods actually encouraged inefficiencies and waste. A new model that measures price, volume and quality against resource cost really trims the equation down to the right size and ties cost to value.

The problem is that lawyers are not accountants or managers. Teach them to fish (i.e. properly value and manage the work and resources) and maybe they will feed the entire firm for the year using alternative methods.

Thanks, as always, for the great post.

Martha

By: James G. McConnell

James G. McConnell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:33:59 +0000

Lawyers will always need time records for the following reason: at some point in your career you are going to be challenged by a client contending you have not devoted sufficient attention to the client’s matter, or by an opponent seeking sanctions for your inaction on discovery requests from the other side. Without contemporaneous time records, you will be hard put to prove that you did the work you say you have done on behalf of the client or in response to the opposing counsel’s discovery requests. No matter what happens regarding billing methods, the management of junior attorneys and the law firm, and the measurement of lawyer productivity, the lawyer’s own best self-defense mechanism is a contemporaneous diary of the time devoted to each client and matter every day you are working.

By: Free Legal Documents

Free Legal Documents — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:06:28 +0000

Thanks, Jordan. Deborah Gordon at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago (http://bit.ly/auVVW) is one of the law firm leaders in pushing Six Sigma and process improvement. She’ll actually sit down with a client and ask the question, “How can we reduce your legal bill?”

When I show WhichDraft.com’s free contract assembly website to lawyers, the common first reaction is, “You’re going to put me out of business.” I try to emphasize to them that there are so many potential clients who can’t afford us right now, that they have a chance to greatly grow their business by being more efficient. There was a recent post on TechCrunch (http://bit.ly/4kCHE) about the radical increase in productivity for software engineers over the last 10 years due to reuse of shared code libraries and open source software. If you think about it, there’s no reason that lawyers can’t do the same.

Jason Mark Anderman
jason@whichdraft.com
twitter.com/JasonAnderman

By: Doug Cornelius

Doug Cornelius — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:36:14 +0000

Jordan -

Spot on. Just because you don’t need to track time for billing does not mean that you shouldn’t be measuring productivity.

I saw an excellent presentation on a law firm’s use of six sigma principles to increase their productivity in handling particular types of transactions. They could easily see the inefficiencies and areas for improvement. They tracked the time spent on various aspects of the transaction and who was doing what work. In the end, they could see a better allocation of resources, better outcomes, and an increase in profitability for that type to transaction.

They key was not merely tracking the time spent, but to categorize how that time was spent. The ABA task code are a useful paradigm, but not useful for measuring productivity.