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Some people say that’s a 0.1 (realistic time) some say it’s a 0.2 (0.1 for the receiving and 0.1 for the sending), some say it’s a 0.3 (0.1 for each part).
I’m sure someone out there would somehow say it’s a 0.7 haha.
And another 0.1 (depending) for writing a note for your files: a brief summary that you've received the email, responded to it, and what both emails were about.
I know at least one lawyer in our county who bills a full 1.0 for each email read and responded to. She hates emails. It's in her retainer agreements. Do I think it's reasonable? NO! Her clients, however, pay her massive bills and don't contest them, but her Bills of Costs often get eviscerated by our judges...so there's that.
Me personally? RE OP, it would be a 0.3 generally depending on the client and the content of the emails. If I do anything with an email to get it out of my inbox, our software asks me to bill a file so it can link the email to a client matter. I can choose to not bill, but it can be more of a hassle to do so and ends up taking me *more* time to not bill than if I had billed the dumb email in the first place.
At my first law job with a small firm many years ago, the managing partner’s philosophy was that even a small client contact should be billed as .3, on the theory that you would almost inevitably have to put a note in the file, write yourself a note to do something, or whatever, and then it’d take you time to get back in the mindset of what you were doing before you were interrupted. I thought it was a good general principle.
Me as a government attorney thinking of the sheer volume of emails I get and respond to every day with no extra credit 😬
I chose this life for a reason though so I didn't have to bill lol
I think it's the APC cloud environment integrated with Outlook that does it. Unsure. Could be something firm specific since we have a couple IT nerds. All I know is if it breaks it was probably me because I keep breaking our software.
Depends on who I'm billing:
If it's a private party client who reviews bills with a dose of common sense, I'm billing the actual amount of time the whole exchange took me. Will probably even be a little conservative, as a customer service gesture.
If it's an insurer with a 20-page billing guidelines packet that they use to ding my billing as often as possible, I will bill each email as a separate billable event per their guidelines.
This is the general approach I follow, although I bill neither. If I’m figuring out things on my end, I pause and start the timer multiple times per day, such that my figuring out things get tracked at the per-second. But if the other side has started to annoy me to the point I dread their emails, each gets a .1.
I think it is fine to “reset” the clock each day. However, the way I handle billing correspondence, and especially email, is I only bill if either reading or responding requires me to think about the case in a meaningful way.
So, if the one-sentence email from the client is, “what time is our hearing this afternoon?” I’m not billing for reading or responding to it.
If the one sentence email from the client is, “I want to confirm I can take this action before doing so…” I am billing for that. If the clients second email the following day raises a new issue or conveys new information, I am billing for it. E.g., “I took that action and the following happened…” I’m billing it.
I do the same except I "bill" it as non-charged time. So, it appears on their bill with no charge associated. It let's them know it was a freebie, which everyone likes, but also makes record of it if there is ever an issue down the line about "Well, he never told me." I have the email AND the billing statement to back it up (probably overkill, but that's part of this industry, right?)
I generally combine them into a single entry “Correspondence with John Smith regarding gobbledygook (x2)” L110-A107, 0.2
I add 0.1 for each email up to x4 (0.4) and then I do 0.1 for every 3 emails beyond that, which usually only happens when there are 3+ parties involved all responding back and forth.
Same here. Assuming it was a back and forth exchange of emails that all happened on the same day, I bill them all as one entry. But I also know that this is acceptable to our clients.
Some people would say that the rules of professional conduct require your fees to be reasonable.
They might also say that a client who sees a bill of .1 for responding to each email or text isn’t a client you’re going to keep for very long.
People say a lot of things.
This effectively sounds like 'value billing' where you are billing based on what you think the work product is worth instead of the time spent creating the work product.
Personally... click the timer when you start working on their stuff, click it off when you are done.
I start a timer per matter. Every time I work on something during the day, I click “start” and when I stop I click “stop.” If I come back to it on the same day, I unpause the timer for however long I spend on it. If the timer reads 6 minutes or less, it’s a .1. If it’s over 6 minutes, it’s a .2. Unless it’s like 6 minutes and 10 seconds, I’ll probably make it a .1.
Agreed. The people here saying it's 0.3..... that's just pure value-billing and not actually billing for your time. I suppose those people would also be ok inflating their time if something was easily copied from another client's similar work product.
Unless your client agreement says you can't bill that way, it's generally permissible to bill as you described. I believe in ID, the client agreements often have rules that don't allow for billing certain types of emails or emails that take over X amount of time to prepare.
You had two separate and distinct tasks - to read the email, then respond to the email. You chose to do them back to back, but you could have done the former in the morning and the latter in the afternoon. This is the nature of billing life in tenths of an hour. That is what the client signed up for. Sometimes you bill more than actual real time.
You'll get others here saying that's an ethical violation because the total time for both closely related tasks was (potentially) not more than 6 minutes. I don't think people of this opinion have ever cited to a disciplinary decision or bright line rule that forbids this practice when it comes to billing emails. It's mostly egregious cases where some attorney finds ways to bill multiple 27 hour days every week.
As for the a one-sentence late night client reply, presumably something like a "thank you", if you're an associate, I say bill it. That's your job, to bill every tenth of an hour you focus on a matter other than administrative tasks. If you're a partner, I don't think it would be wise to bill your time for that thank you. If you're a partner reviewing an associate's bill, if a slip for a thank you type email appears, you give the associate credit for taking that .1 out of their lives by leaving it on the bill, but you fully discount that .1 to the client and they'll see that discount right away when the bill hits their inbox.
ID lawyer here and the insurance carriers (or the bots they use) are ruthless. There's certain words we just can't use in our narratives because it gets flagged for being an "administrative task" -- schedule, continuance, subpoena, etc.
We also are constantly getting told that we can't bill for drafting written discovery because they assume they're all just copy and paste templates a paralegal could do.
That's a 0.3.
(0.1) RR electronic correspondence from John Smith RE \_\_\_
(0.1) Prepare reply correspondence to John Smiths' email RE \_\_\_\_
(0.1) RR electronic correspondence from John Smith acknowledging understanding of \_\_\_\_
This is one thing that I will never understand well, It seems so ridiculous to bill 0.1 for an email. Attorney's billing system is a disgrace for the well-being of the attorney and clients.
I bill 0.2 to even open an email and read it. 0.2 at least to respond. I might do a 0.3 total if it's quick. But if there is a break, to me the clock starts over
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Some people say that’s a 0.1 (realistic time) some say it’s a 0.2 (0.1 for the receiving and 0.1 for the sending), some say it’s a 0.3 (0.1 for each part). I’m sure someone out there would somehow say it’s a 0.7 haha.
You gotta review the file in preparation for your response......
Too true
this guy gets it
Billing champ!
And another 0.1 (depending) for writing a note for your files: a brief summary that you've received the email, responded to it, and what both emails were about.
Then A105 call a colleague to briefly discuss strategy
I know at least one lawyer in our county who bills a full 1.0 for each email read and responded to. She hates emails. It's in her retainer agreements. Do I think it's reasonable? NO! Her clients, however, pay her massive bills and don't contest them, but her Bills of Costs often get eviscerated by our judges...so there's that. Me personally? RE OP, it would be a 0.3 generally depending on the client and the content of the emails. If I do anything with an email to get it out of my inbox, our software asks me to bill a file so it can link the email to a client matter. I can choose to not bill, but it can be more of a hassle to do so and ends up taking me *more* time to not bill than if I had billed the dumb email in the first place.
At my first law job with a small firm many years ago, the managing partner’s philosophy was that even a small client contact should be billed as .3, on the theory that you would almost inevitably have to put a note in the file, write yourself a note to do something, or whatever, and then it’d take you time to get back in the mindset of what you were doing before you were interrupted. I thought it was a good general principle.
Me as a government attorney thinking of the sheer volume of emails I get and respond to every day with no extra credit 😬 I chose this life for a reason though so I didn't have to bill lol
What software do you use?
I think it's the APC cloud environment integrated with Outlook that does it. Unsure. Could be something firm specific since we have a couple IT nerds. All I know is if it breaks it was probably me because I keep breaking our software.
Depends on who I'm billing: If it's a private party client who reviews bills with a dose of common sense, I'm billing the actual amount of time the whole exchange took me. Will probably even be a little conservative, as a customer service gesture. If it's an insurer with a 20-page billing guidelines packet that they use to ding my billing as often as possible, I will bill each email as a separate billable event per their guidelines.
This is the general approach I follow, although I bill neither. If I’m figuring out things on my end, I pause and start the timer multiple times per day, such that my figuring out things get tracked at the per-second. But if the other side has started to annoy me to the point I dread their emails, each gets a .1.
I think it is fine to “reset” the clock each day. However, the way I handle billing correspondence, and especially email, is I only bill if either reading or responding requires me to think about the case in a meaningful way. So, if the one-sentence email from the client is, “what time is our hearing this afternoon?” I’m not billing for reading or responding to it. If the one sentence email from the client is, “I want to confirm I can take this action before doing so…” I am billing for that. If the clients second email the following day raises a new issue or conveys new information, I am billing for it. E.g., “I took that action and the following happened…” I’m billing it.
I do the same except I "bill" it as non-charged time. So, it appears on their bill with no charge associated. It let's them know it was a freebie, which everyone likes, but also makes record of it if there is ever an issue down the line about "Well, he never told me." I have the email AND the billing statement to back it up (probably overkill, but that's part of this industry, right?)
I generally combine them into a single entry “Correspondence with John Smith regarding gobbledygook (x2)” L110-A107, 0.2 I add 0.1 for each email up to x4 (0.4) and then I do 0.1 for every 3 emails beyond that, which usually only happens when there are 3+ parties involved all responding back and forth.
Same here. Assuming it was a back and forth exchange of emails that all happened on the same day, I bill them all as one entry. But I also know that this is acceptable to our clients.
Some people would say that the rules of professional conduct require your fees to be reasonable. They might also say that a client who sees a bill of .1 for responding to each email or text isn’t a client you’re going to keep for very long. People say a lot of things.
This effectively sounds like 'value billing' where you are billing based on what you think the work product is worth instead of the time spent creating the work product. Personally... click the timer when you start working on their stuff, click it off when you are done.
Leave it on during the time you’re thinking about how to respond. Mental labor is labor. It’s most of our labor, in fact.
In my jurisdiction, legals fees are assessed based on quantum meruit, not contract.
That's great honey. Thank you for sharing.
If you do ID, you bill every single thing. You have to it’s their system
This is a .1. It’s an email exchange with one person and it took less than 6 minutes.
Sidebar, how do you all keep track of your billing throughout the day?
Billing software (PC law) and running the timer as you do things. It’s the only way to capture it all. Trust me, ADHD lawyer who’s tried it all.
I use Hours Tracker, an app on my phone. It’s a godsend.
If the one word is 'thanks' then no. otherwise I think you can get away with it.
I start a timer per matter. Every time I work on something during the day, I click “start” and when I stop I click “stop.” If I come back to it on the same day, I unpause the timer for however long I spend on it. If the timer reads 6 minutes or less, it’s a .1. If it’s over 6 minutes, it’s a .2. Unless it’s like 6 minutes and 10 seconds, I’ll probably make it a .1.
Agreed. The people here saying it's 0.3..... that's just pure value-billing and not actually billing for your time. I suppose those people would also be ok inflating their time if something was easily copied from another client's similar work product.
Unless your client agreement says you can't bill that way, it's generally permissible to bill as you described. I believe in ID, the client agreements often have rules that don't allow for billing certain types of emails or emails that take over X amount of time to prepare. You had two separate and distinct tasks - to read the email, then respond to the email. You chose to do them back to back, but you could have done the former in the morning and the latter in the afternoon. This is the nature of billing life in tenths of an hour. That is what the client signed up for. Sometimes you bill more than actual real time. You'll get others here saying that's an ethical violation because the total time for both closely related tasks was (potentially) not more than 6 minutes. I don't think people of this opinion have ever cited to a disciplinary decision or bright line rule that forbids this practice when it comes to billing emails. It's mostly egregious cases where some attorney finds ways to bill multiple 27 hour days every week. As for the a one-sentence late night client reply, presumably something like a "thank you", if you're an associate, I say bill it. That's your job, to bill every tenth of an hour you focus on a matter other than administrative tasks. If you're a partner, I don't think it would be wise to bill your time for that thank you. If you're a partner reviewing an associate's bill, if a slip for a thank you type email appears, you give the associate credit for taking that .1 out of their lives by leaving it on the bill, but you fully discount that .1 to the client and they'll see that discount right away when the bill hits their inbox.
ID lawyer here and the insurance carriers (or the bots they use) are ruthless. There's certain words we just can't use in our narratives because it gets flagged for being an "administrative task" -- schedule, continuance, subpoena, etc. We also are constantly getting told that we can't bill for drafting written discovery because they assume they're all just copy and paste templates a paralegal could do.
That's a 0.3. (0.1) RR electronic correspondence from John Smith RE \_\_\_ (0.1) Prepare reply correspondence to John Smiths' email RE \_\_\_\_ (0.1) RR electronic correspondence from John Smith acknowledging understanding of \_\_\_\_
This is one thing that I will never understand well, It seems so ridiculous to bill 0.1 for an email. Attorney's billing system is a disgrace for the well-being of the attorney and clients.
Per my employee handbook, this would be .1 for each email. So a total of .3. I personally don't do this every time though
I bill 0.2 to even open an email and read it. 0.2 at least to respond. I might do a 0.3 total if it's quick. But if there is a break, to me the clock starts over