It’s a weekday morning, and I’m in the office. Exercise and a shower are behind me. Cereal and hot coffee are in front of me. I feel happy and at peace with the world. The day’s frustrations and aggravations haven’t started yet, and the morning beckons me with a friendly, anticipatory wave.
Except for one thing: yesterday’s timesheet. It’s only half-filled out with some case names and some random office administrative tasks jotted down. It will take me at least thirty minutes to complete it, and even then, I’ll be left wondering what happened to the additional three hours that I worked but which are not reflected on my timesheet.
For those of you whose workday accomplishments are not tied to the number of hours billed, good for you! For legal professionals, we mostly bill by the hour, even if a portion of our practice is contingent fee or flat fee. Maximizing revenues is based on productivity, efficiency, the use of paraprofessionals, template forms for routine matters, and the use of technology but also on accurately capturing the day’s activities so that clients can be billed.
We have fancy billing software that helps to some extent, but that works best for large cases and timekeepers that have the luxury of blocks of uninterrupted time. You just pull up the case name, start the software timer, describe the activity, and away you go. For me, that doesn’t work. As manager of my firm, I get interrupted dozens of times a day. I believe it is more efficient to field questions as they arise than to block off chunks of time and delay decisions and answers to questions. So editing a motion for summary judgment is riddled with random interruptions: can you run a conflicts check on this new case, what hourly rates are appropriate, this client has a question about a large bill, opposing counsel needs to discuss a settlement, another client is going rogue, how to we rein her back in, an urgent email, and on and on.
I jot down cases, conferences, phone calls, emails, and administrative and management tasks frantically, hoping that I can recreate my day into tidy six-minute increments by using those notations, my email inbox, and my calendar. I aspire to finish each timesheet by the end of the day, or at least by first-thing the next morning. But mostly, I don’t. In fact, sometimes I have five or six incomplete timesheets staring at my guilty face, and it can take two hours to finish them. That process always makes me feel ashamed and contrite. I vow to never let that happen again – until it does.
This week’s epiphany was that completing and turning in a timesheet every single day was just a habit I needed to establish. SO easy, right? It’s just a matter of deciding to do it, setting up a trigger to make sure it gets done, recording my daily accomplishment to encourage the routine, and, of course, rewarding myself for doing it. Like any other habit, it will take a while before it becomes automatic, but I’ll get there.
Wish me luck! I’m shooting for a 50-day streak. Got to run; yesterday’s timesheet calls!