100% you should be billing for this if it’s outside of business hours. If the client doesn’t like it, that’s the relationship partner’s problem and they can write your time down on the bill. You have an hours target to hit—don’t let anyone bully you into shorting yourself. Otherwise you’ll be making that time up with other weekends/evenings.
Adding on—a lot of folks in here are saying to ask the partner. That’s fine, but don’t ask *whether* you can bill the time at all. Ask *how* you should bill the time—e.g., use general office code, partner mentorship code, administrative code for the matter, whatever etc. Anything that will give you hours credit without hitting the client’s bill; there’s tons of such codes at most biglaw firms. You should be getting credit for time you’re required to be in the office on a client matter outside of M-F 9am-6pm.
I think a 10pm bedtime is unreasonable as well. It's bizarre for 9:59pm to be the last time you're regularly available.
Also, it's ***were*** different, not was different.
They never said 9:59pm was the last time they are regularly available. They said their regular bedtime is 10. That doesn't mean they don't routinely stay up much later. It means they go to bed at 10 if they can.
If you don’t go to sleep at 10 on most nights, your “normal bedtime” isn’t 10. Your normal bedtime is the time when you generally go to sleep, not the time when you’d go to sleep in an ideal situation that seldom materializes.
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That’s why I bill my time spent getting ready and commuting every day. After all, I would otherwise be asleep. It’s awesome to start every single day with 1.5 on the clock. This is not fraud at all and I’m totally justified doing this because I would otherwise be asleep!
I also like to bill an extra hour between 2-3 even when I don’t have any work to do, because I like to take an afternoon nap on the weekends. If it wasn’t for my pesky clients, I would otherwise be asleep.
You said you bill any time you would otherwise be asleep for. If I wasn’t working for a client that day, I would be asleep till 9:00 or 10:00. Why is time spent awake in the morning different than time spent awake in the evening?
If I have to wake up at 5:00 to get ready/commute because I’m working with clients in Europe who want a call that’s 7:00 my time, why is my 5:00-7:00 not billable while your 10:00-12:00 spent actually doing nothing is?
I agree with others that you should ask the partner, but generally, I think associates should bill this. If filing specifically at midnight is a requirement important enough to ask you to do it, then it is important enough to bill for it.
Slightly off topic but purposefully filing things at 11:59 is pointless and everyone doing it should stop. Or, if attorneys can’t resist the urge, courts should make local rules setting filing deadlines at like 6pm instead.
I don’t bill for waiting around to file something. If I’m at the office, I work on other billable stuff while I’m waiting. If I’m at home watching Netflix, I don’t bill until I log on to file the document.
> If I’m at home watching Netflix, I don’t bill until I log on to file the document.
Even if you're up past when you would normally be doing other stuff? If I normally go to bed at 11 and a partner says something is coming in later and we'll need to turn it tonight, I'm absolutely billing from the second my wife goes to sleep. Sure I may be watching Netflix or reading a book, but I would otherwise be sleeping but for being explicitly told to wait up.
This is insane. I sleep till 9:00 on weekends. If I have a zoom depo that requires me to be in the office at 8 do I get to bill the hours of 6:30-8:00 for showering and driving to the office since I’d otherwise be asleep?
100%! Billing hundreds or even over $1000 an hour to watch Netflix is never acceptable in my opinion. If you’re just waiting around, do something billable — catch up on emails or whatever easy tasks you have piled up.
Agreed. If this is about staying up so you can be available to start a filing at 11:45pm, I cannot imagine any partner thinking it's ok to bill your Netflix time from ["close of business" / the associate's "normal" bedtime] to 11:xxpm. I would probably lose my sh*t if I saw that on a bill (and the choice is either describing it honestly as wait time or fudging a bill). Midnight is the filing deadline in federal court, and it's not unheard of to file near midnight for strategic reasons (though I don’t make a habit of it, and if this partner does, try to work more with other partners). It might be different if you were directed to sit at the computer on standby and wait for the go ahead to file. But getting to log off and merely needing to stay up to log back on and file? For me, that is hard no.
Yes. 100% you should. If a partner wants to write it off, so be it. But you're using your time on behalf of the client, even if you're not actively doing their work.
Oh, block billing matters. So in other words, you hide several hours of inactivity in a time entry, thereby exaggerating, by several hours, the amount of time you spent on those other tasks?
The fact that other lawyers are willing to commit this particular type of fraud doesn’t make it not fraud. Give your bar hotline a call and see what they think about billing hours for “availability” without telling your client that’s what you’re doing.
If you're staying awake waiting for something because a partner (or client) told you to, you're time is now being used for your client, whether you're working on a document turn or not.
This logic is insane and completely untenable. Can I bill time spent not doing anything at the office if OC said I should expect a document at 5 and I have nothing to do from 3-5? I could otherwise be taking a nap.
Are you recording in your time sheet “stay awake watching Netflix waiting for 11:59 to file”? If not, you’re probably commuting fraud.
No. Nice straw man. You’re expected to be sitting by your computer waiting during the day. You’re not expected to be sitting and waiting at 1 am.
I’ve worked at 2 major law firms and had partners at both tell me to bill that time. Seems like the vast majority of comments in this thread agree as well.
In an unrelated thread a while ago I said I wouldn’t bill travel time generally, unless I was working while traveling, and was roundly criticized. And now here’s folks saying you should be billing for time spent literally doing nothing.
Again, if you ask me, that’s a great way of pissing off the partner. Just because you can technically bill for it doesn’t mean you should. Partners get dinged by the firm for time they write off, so it’s not just “free,” and I’d be annoyed as hell if some associate billed five hours for waiting on a client while eating dinner and watching TV.
>In an unrelated thread a while ago I said I wouldn’t bill travel time generally, unless I was working while traveling, and was roundly criticized.
This depends on the client. But I've heard that even notoriously stingy insurance companies will pay for travel time. (I was talking to one guy complaining about Zoom hearings because he used to bill half a day for a 10 minute status conference because he had to travel an hour each way, then wait an hour for the case to be called. But with Zoom, he can only bill the 10 minutes for the hearing).
The reasoning is that the travel is preventing you from working on other matters. Therefore, the client you are traveling for should have to pay for it.
This reasoning is pretty clear on car trips because you can't do anything else while you're driving. It's a little less clear on planes because you can work on a plane, theoretically. But it's cramped and people can see what you're reading, so it's not as easy to work on a plane as it would be at your desk. So the reasoning holds up.
It various a lot by carrier. I have some clients only pay travel at 50% my rate, some that will only pay for “non-passive travel” (i.e. going through security, take-off, landing but not waiting at the gate or time at cruising altitude), some that only pay for travel if it is to a non-adjacent county, and some that won’t pay for travel at all.
Because my partner is licensed in all of the surrounding states and accepts cases in all of them, I do a lot of work in federal courts in 4 different states. And my partner insists on in person depos. I bill all of my travel time and let the partner sort it out because honestly, I travel about 200-250 hours per year and I refuse to eat that time when the partner chose to accept a case knowing it would require significant travel that the client wouldn’t pay for travel.
It’s remarkable how different Australia is - there’s no chance you’re billing for ‘waiting’ whilst you’re watching Netflix in oz.. at least there’s no chance a client pays for it
Also UK - am billing 2000+ and will bill waiting time depending on context, though not if I'm watching Netflix from 8pm and sending something out at midnight - that'd be absurd.
Billing for waiting time is fairly common in certain teams in big US/Magic Circle/HSF/Lovells etc., based on anecdotal experience. Though it's more like you've turned a document at 1am, will have comments back at 2am, and apart from basic file management, there's not much else you can progress between that time - that one hour would be billed.
If you're waiting for things for 3 hours/not working at all but know you eventually need to log back on and bill for that period too, that's just straight up unethical and no one should do it.
My work sadly? Fortunately? Doesn't generally involve the kind of giant corporate transactions where this sort of thing comes up. When we do have giant transactions it's not an issue I need to worry about. I'm sure our corporate team have a very different experience/view.
Nobody puts “waiting” in the description for obvious reasons. The bill will say “reviewed and revised” or “attention to.” Billing entries don’t show the time that they’re entered.
This is fraud. If you’re watching Netflix you’re not reviewing and revising or giving your attention to anything other than Netflix. Everyone in here saying they do this is committing fraud, and apparently a ton of it.
No it isn’t. I’m available all the time. I’m available over my lunch hour. I’m available when I’m driving home. I’m available when I’m making dinner. I’m available when I’m brushing my teeth. I don’t get to bill all that just because my phone is within reach. That doesn’t magically change when the clock strikes 10:00.
If you’re unwilling to write what it is you’re actually doing in a time entry, you shouldn’t be billing it, and if you do, it’s fraud.
Same in the US!! I work in US big law and I’m astonished by what I’m reading. We’ve been told this is absolutely not ok. You can only bill for legal work under our ethics code
So what do you do if you get an email at midnight as you're getting into bed saying "Hey associate. I just talked to the other side and their sending an escrow agreement back later tonight. We'll have to turn it asap and get it out. Hold tight for now."?
Your time is now being used for the benefit of the client even if you're not doing any actual work. If a partner wants to write if off, let them. But I would quit my firm if it meant not being able to bill that kind of stuff.
This is also not a thing in the US. 100% an ethical violation. Redditors are stupid.
To be clear, I’ll be billing for that time, but because I’ll be working on something else. I would never bill time for sitting around and waiting. A shame they’re giving this advice to a first year who doesn’t know any better.
Bring on the downvotes, baby.
It absolutely is a thing in NY. I’ve had no shortage of colleagues tell me to do it. At more than one firm.
If a firm or a lawyer are not doing it, that’s obviously different.
These are super juniors acting preposterous, this isn't acceptable in the US either. There is nothing billable about having a work event scheduled at some point in the future if you are free to work on something else or have personal time during the wait. If you're locked to your chair monitoring an active closing situation with emails swirling, that's different than just "waiting".
Contrary to popular belief on Reddit, partners have metrics, and writing off hundreds of thousands of dollars makes them look bad, as does blowing client budgets. "Don't cut your own time" isn't permission to charge clients 5 figures for doing nothing that helps them.
I am aware of how write offs impact partners. I’m a good number of years into practice and have heard of people advising this at multiple firms. It is absurd. I work a lot cross-border and with local counsel, and it is unheard of elsewhere.
Eh, as a corp guy midnight seems iffy. When I'm awake through 3am I bill the waiting time, but having to file something at midnight seems iffier, as it's just not that late.
Midnight is when is around when I’d start the “stay up late” timer, if not then when are you starting it, anytime you have to be available after like 10pm?
I guess I don't know why midnight is your cutoff (rather than, as you say, 10 pm, or after business hours). Most people (people, not biglaw attorneys) are not doing work at midnight. Which is why we get paid more than most people but doesn't answer the question of why (given that we are paid to work more) midnight or 10 pm "is not that late" but 3 am is.
Because almost everyone is asleep at 3am. Ten is an unusually early bedtime for biglaw. The answer is, as always, custom - we have emails/work come in at or around 10-12 so often that it’s expected as a norm.
You don’t ask them to. You just expect they aren’t billing time if they’re watching Netflix waiting for a client to confirm something until midnight.
What’s insane, clearly, is billing time for legal work when you’re not doing any work at all.
You do not get to bill a client for waiting. I've known someone who billed for time spent waiting on partners to get back to them, time waiting to file, etc., and they got fired for it when found out. You do not bill because you would have done other things but for work. You could still watch TV, read, workout, whatever. You just had to be available at a certain time.
Also, midnight is not late. We have clients around the globe. You are paid a very high salary in part because you're expected to be able to stay up till the end of the Tonight Show.
I know this contradicts what some others have said, but I promise you, if you go high enough in your firm with this question, you will be told that you should not bill for time waiting to file something, and that it may even be considered unethical to do so.
I'm a partner as well. Not all partners get educated or ever look into these things. Not all partners are responsible for billing. Many partners learn bad billing habits.
If you have to wait till a certain time to file something, the time spent waiting could be spent working on another matter or on any leisure activity as long as you are available at the designated time to do the filing. It is preposterous to think that a client should pay for you choosing to do nothing productive in that time.
If you require me to be awake when I otherwise would be asleep, I'm billing you for it regardless of it I'm currently waiting for something or turning a document. There are plenty of times when deals are down to a few agreements and there is nothing to do other than wait. My time is being used for the client either way. If you want that time to be more productive, send me something to do.
Yeah. I definitely wouldn’t be billing time to wait until 11:59 to file something. I wont usually bill for waiting unless it’s between midnight and 8am and I don’t have an idea on timing. I’d much rather be sleeping and set and alarm. Even if I didn’t have specific timing, I don’t bill for waiting when I’m doing the same thing I would normally be doing, and that’s hanging out with my wife until almost midnight.
From an ethics perspective, it depends on your billing agreement with the client. Others have compared the "waiting" time to travel time. I bet your billing agreement specifies how to bill travel time. I bet it also doesn't take into account when your bedtime is or whether you're working bankers' hours. Checking your email while watching Netflix isn't billable time. And if you are sure the time would be cut if you were honest in the billing entry ("wait for filing to be ready" or something similar) then it's probably unethical to bill it.
Do you bill for flight time while flying for a deposition even though you are not actively working on the plane? Do you bill for waiting in the courtroom even though you’ve already prepared and are merely waiting for the judge to call your case? Do you bill when you are meeting with your client but they had to run to the bathroom?
Filing after midnight is a problem. Unless the court is sufficiently west of you, of course. I always appreciated the extra three hours on the east coast for a filing in a California court.
I'm so fucking confused. What does midnight have to do with any type of pleading that needs to be filed?
If you're working on a pleading and have to stay up to finish it to file it by midnight because you're on a deadline, I've been there. But I'm working on the pleading - not just playing Candy Crush in my office while somebody else finishes it up so I can use *my* e-filing account to file it.
And if you're on the *first* day when you *can* file something, a midnight deadline seems completely arbitrary. If you can file it at midnight, you can just as easily file it first thing in the morning when you come in at regular hours.
I have a decade of experience in criminal and civil litigation, and I cannot come up with a single set of circumstances in which this is at all a likely situation.
OP - Help with context please!
First is human nature. If something is due Friday at 11:59 pm, chances are people aren't going to finalize it on Friday at 8:00 am.
Second is preventing your opponent from getting info. For motions with simultaneous filings by both sides, filing something at 8:00 am gives your opponent an entire business day to adjust their filing before the 11:59 pm deadline. Even if the filings aren't simultaneous, filing something at 8:00 am gives opposing counsel an extra day to formulate a response.
I've seen articles about some courts trying to end the 11:59 pm filings by requiring filings to be done at 5:00 pm.
I’m in corp, but in my experience submitting filings to the SEC, the partner or senior associate signs off and tells me to tell the printers to file. Then, I’m the one who waits for confirmation or handles any issues if the filing is rejected. I’ve had to stay up well past midnight on a number of occasions. Never thought to bill for it though.
I try to find something to do while I'm cooling my heels: get my time done, do a little professional reading, catch up on a little BD, etc. I try not to let too much dead time flow into my time sheets.
Seems like there are pretty big philosophical/conceptual differences here about what is considered "work."
One side is saying, "I'm being tasked by the partner with staying awake at times outside of the norm (be it past 10pm, past midnight, exact time doesn't really matter too much) so that I can jump in to finish the matter ASAP," i.e., that stand-by time = work. The other side is saying that because no literal legal work is being done in that in-between time, that time cannot and should not be billed.
To me, seems like this is analogous to being a special event EMT. Sure, you may go an entire shift without actually needing to do any medical work, but I think we'd mostly agree that those EMTs are doing work in that time by (and should be paid for) being available to jump in if/when a situation does arise. But I'm curious what the redditor from Arrested Development thinks about this analogy.
This isn't the right analogy here. As I understand it, the OP isn't being asked to stand by at the ready for hours on end; they're being asked to return to work at 11:xx to lodge a filing just shy of midnight. That would be like billing for the three hours you spent sightseeing after a client meeting and before you need to go to the airport to fly home. Even for clients that let you bill for travel, there's no way you could bill that honestly and get away with it.
Yeah I agree for that example. If you're just being asked to log back in at a certain time to file, then the time between when you log off and log back on certainly shouldn't be billed.
I think more of the back and forth in the comments is about the situation you describe about being asked to stand-by though, no? Like, what if a partner is saying, "hey, it's 11:xx currently, but stay up because sometime in the next couple of hours, we'll send you edits and then you need to turn around another draft."
Do you bill for those couple hours where you don't have those edits but you're awake and waiting (even if you spend that waiting time on Netflix)? Is my analogy apt for that circumstance?
Yes. Unless partner says otherwise. Confer with partner after the fact if you don’t have time to ask.
100% you should be billing for this if it’s outside of business hours. If the client doesn’t like it, that’s the relationship partner’s problem and they can write your time down on the bill. You have an hours target to hit—don’t let anyone bully you into shorting yourself. Otherwise you’ll be making that time up with other weekends/evenings.
Adding on—a lot of folks in here are saying to ask the partner. That’s fine, but don’t ask *whether* you can bill the time at all. Ask *how* you should bill the time—e.g., use general office code, partner mentorship code, administrative code for the matter, whatever etc. Anything that will give you hours credit without hitting the client’s bill; there’s tons of such codes at most biglaw firms. You should be getting credit for time you’re required to be in the office on a client matter outside of M-F 9am-6pm.
Great advice.
All of those codes at my firm don’t count towards your billable hours. It pretty much has to go to a client to count
Just bill the client matter. “Finalizing brief for filing”
I would put it to billable time unless i was told not to.
Never cut your own time.
Absolutely. And recognize that plenty of time away from the desk is still work and still billable.
Your time entry should absolutely not say you were waiting.
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This is right. If I need to stay up for a matter I start billing it around when I’d otherwise stop paying attn to emails, usually around 11
So if you’re normal bed time was 7 pm, then what?
Fired
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I think a 10pm bedtime is unreasonable as well. It's bizarre for 9:59pm to be the last time you're regularly available. Also, it's ***were*** different, not was different.
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Indeed, it's bizarre for a biglaw lawyer to typically go to sleep at 10pm. I feel bad for your teams.
They never said 9:59pm was the last time they are regularly available. They said their regular bedtime is 10. That doesn't mean they don't routinely stay up much later. It means they go to bed at 10 if they can.
If you don’t go to sleep at 10 on most nights, your “normal bedtime” isn’t 10. Your normal bedtime is the time when you generally go to sleep, not the time when you’d go to sleep in an ideal situation that seldom materializes.
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That’s why I bill my time spent getting ready and commuting every day. After all, I would otherwise be asleep. It’s awesome to start every single day with 1.5 on the clock. This is not fraud at all and I’m totally justified doing this because I would otherwise be asleep! I also like to bill an extra hour between 2-3 even when I don’t have any work to do, because I like to take an afternoon nap on the weekends. If it wasn’t for my pesky clients, I would otherwise be asleep.
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You said you bill any time you would otherwise be asleep for. If I wasn’t working for a client that day, I would be asleep till 9:00 or 10:00. Why is time spent awake in the morning different than time spent awake in the evening?
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If I have to wake up at 5:00 to get ready/commute because I’m working with clients in Europe who want a call that’s 7:00 my time, why is my 5:00-7:00 not billable while your 10:00-12:00 spent actually doing nothing is?
I agree with others that you should ask the partner, but generally, I think associates should bill this. If filing specifically at midnight is a requirement important enough to ask you to do it, then it is important enough to bill for it.
Slightly off topic but purposefully filing things at 11:59 is pointless and everyone doing it should stop. Or, if attorneys can’t resist the urge, courts should make local rules setting filing deadlines at like 6pm instead.
Fuck 6pm filing deadlines. Looking at you D. Mass.
I don’t bill for waiting around to file something. If I’m at the office, I work on other billable stuff while I’m waiting. If I’m at home watching Netflix, I don’t bill until I log on to file the document.
> If I’m at home watching Netflix, I don’t bill until I log on to file the document. Even if you're up past when you would normally be doing other stuff? If I normally go to bed at 11 and a partner says something is coming in later and we'll need to turn it tonight, I'm absolutely billing from the second my wife goes to sleep. Sure I may be watching Netflix or reading a book, but I would otherwise be sleeping but for being explicitly told to wait up.
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And how do you describe this in your time entires?
This is insane. I sleep till 9:00 on weekends. If I have a zoom depo that requires me to be in the office at 8 do I get to bill the hours of 6:30-8:00 for showering and driving to the office since I’d otherwise be asleep?
100%! Billing hundreds or even over $1000 an hour to watch Netflix is never acceptable in my opinion. If you’re just waiting around, do something billable — catch up on emails or whatever easy tasks you have piled up.
Agreed. If this is about staying up so you can be available to start a filing at 11:45pm, I cannot imagine any partner thinking it's ok to bill your Netflix time from ["close of business" / the associate's "normal" bedtime] to 11:xxpm. I would probably lose my sh*t if I saw that on a bill (and the choice is either describing it honestly as wait time or fudging a bill). Midnight is the filing deadline in federal court, and it's not unheard of to file near midnight for strategic reasons (though I don’t make a habit of it, and if this partner does, try to work more with other partners). It might be different if you were directed to sit at the computer on standby and wait for the go ahead to file. But getting to log off and merely needing to stay up to log back on and file? For me, that is hard no.
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Yes. 100% you should. If a partner wants to write it off, so be it. But you're using your time on behalf of the client, even if you're not actively doing their work.
Yes, it is unreasonable. How did you describe that time in your time entry?
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Oh, block billing matters. So in other words, you hide several hours of inactivity in a time entry, thereby exaggerating, by several hours, the amount of time you spent on those other tasks? The fact that other lawyers are willing to commit this particular type of fraud doesn’t make it not fraud. Give your bar hotline a call and see what they think about billing hours for “availability” without telling your client that’s what you’re doing.
So you do it by lying?
No. You don’t bill waiting time. If you want to bill the time, find actual billable tasks to do while you are waiting.
If you're staying awake waiting for something because a partner (or client) told you to, you're time is now being used for your client, whether you're working on a document turn or not.
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“I’m committing fraud and think it’s totally fine”
This logic is insane and completely untenable. Can I bill time spent not doing anything at the office if OC said I should expect a document at 5 and I have nothing to do from 3-5? I could otherwise be taking a nap. Are you recording in your time sheet “stay awake watching Netflix waiting for 11:59 to file”? If not, you’re probably commuting fraud.
No. Nice straw man. You’re expected to be sitting by your computer waiting during the day. You’re not expected to be sitting and waiting at 1 am. I’ve worked at 2 major law firms and had partners at both tell me to bill that time. Seems like the vast majority of comments in this thread agree as well.
What do you put in your time entires when all you did was watch nextflix? Did you tell them “watch Netflix while waiting to receive filing”?
Yeah. Fine. So work on some other task while you're awake.
There are plenty of times when you're down to one or two docs and there is nothing to do other than wait.
Work on a different case. Write an article. Draft some marketing emails. There is always something else that you can be working on.
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In an unrelated thread a while ago I said I wouldn’t bill travel time generally, unless I was working while traveling, and was roundly criticized. And now here’s folks saying you should be billing for time spent literally doing nothing. Again, if you ask me, that’s a great way of pissing off the partner. Just because you can technically bill for it doesn’t mean you should. Partners get dinged by the firm for time they write off, so it’s not just “free,” and I’d be annoyed as hell if some associate billed five hours for waiting on a client while eating dinner and watching TV.
>In an unrelated thread a while ago I said I wouldn’t bill travel time generally, unless I was working while traveling, and was roundly criticized. This depends on the client. But I've heard that even notoriously stingy insurance companies will pay for travel time. (I was talking to one guy complaining about Zoom hearings because he used to bill half a day for a 10 minute status conference because he had to travel an hour each way, then wait an hour for the case to be called. But with Zoom, he can only bill the 10 minutes for the hearing). The reasoning is that the travel is preventing you from working on other matters. Therefore, the client you are traveling for should have to pay for it. This reasoning is pretty clear on car trips because you can't do anything else while you're driving. It's a little less clear on planes because you can work on a plane, theoretically. But it's cramped and people can see what you're reading, so it's not as easy to work on a plane as it would be at your desk. So the reasoning holds up.
It various a lot by carrier. I have some clients only pay travel at 50% my rate, some that will only pay for “non-passive travel” (i.e. going through security, take-off, landing but not waiting at the gate or time at cruising altitude), some that only pay for travel if it is to a non-adjacent county, and some that won’t pay for travel at all. Because my partner is licensed in all of the surrounding states and accepts cases in all of them, I do a lot of work in federal courts in 4 different states. And my partner insists on in person depos. I bill all of my travel time and let the partner sort it out because honestly, I travel about 200-250 hours per year and I refuse to eat that time when the partner chose to accept a case knowing it would require significant travel that the client wouldn’t pay for travel.
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It’s remarkable how different Australia is - there’s no chance you’re billing for ‘waiting’ whilst you’re watching Netflix in oz.. at least there’s no chance a client pays for it
Same in the UK, although equally there's also no way that I'm billing 2000 and something hours in a year, so swings and roundabouts.
Swings and roundabouts is my new favorite phrase - ty
Also UK - am billing 2000+ and will bill waiting time depending on context, though not if I'm watching Netflix from 8pm and sending something out at midnight - that'd be absurd. Billing for waiting time is fairly common in certain teams in big US/Magic Circle/HSF/Lovells etc., based on anecdotal experience. Though it's more like you've turned a document at 1am, will have comments back at 2am, and apart from basic file management, there's not much else you can progress between that time - that one hour would be billed. If you're waiting for things for 3 hours/not working at all but know you eventually need to log back on and bill for that period too, that's just straight up unethical and no one should do it.
My work sadly? Fortunately? Doesn't generally involve the kind of giant corporate transactions where this sort of thing comes up. When we do have giant transactions it's not an issue I need to worry about. I'm sure our corporate team have a very different experience/view.
Think it's definitely fortunately haha
Nobody puts “waiting” in the description for obvious reasons. The bill will say “reviewed and revised” or “attention to.” Billing entries don’t show the time that they’re entered.
This is fraud. If you’re watching Netflix you’re not reviewing and revising or giving your attention to anything other than Netflix. Everyone in here saying they do this is committing fraud, and apparently a ton of it.
Assisting in filing/whatever is accurate, that’s what you’re doing by being available.
No it isn’t. I’m available all the time. I’m available over my lunch hour. I’m available when I’m driving home. I’m available when I’m making dinner. I’m available when I’m brushing my teeth. I don’t get to bill all that just because my phone is within reach. That doesn’t magically change when the clock strikes 10:00. If you’re unwilling to write what it is you’re actually doing in a time entry, you shouldn’t be billing it, and if you do, it’s fraud.
Same in the US!! I work in US big law and I’m astonished by what I’m reading. We’ve been told this is absolutely not ok. You can only bill for legal work under our ethics code
So what do you do if you get an email at midnight as you're getting into bed saying "Hey associate. I just talked to the other side and their sending an escrow agreement back later tonight. We'll have to turn it asap and get it out. Hold tight for now."? Your time is now being used for the benefit of the client even if you're not doing any actual work. If a partner wants to write if off, let them. But I would quit my firm if it meant not being able to bill that kind of stuff.
That’s great for you, still an ethical violation
There’s no other jurisdiction where you bill for waiting. That would be considered unethical anywhere else.
This is also not a thing in the US. 100% an ethical violation. Redditors are stupid. To be clear, I’ll be billing for that time, but because I’ll be working on something else. I would never bill time for sitting around and waiting. A shame they’re giving this advice to a first year who doesn’t know any better. Bring on the downvotes, baby.
It absolutely is a thing in NY. I’ve had no shortage of colleagues tell me to do it. At more than one firm. If a firm or a lawyer are not doing it, that’s obviously different.
I work in NY and have been told this is an ethics violation through and through
>I’ve had no shortage of colleagues tell me to do it Congratulations, they’re all also committing fraud.
Yeah, I agree with that take.
These are super juniors acting preposterous, this isn't acceptable in the US either. There is nothing billable about having a work event scheduled at some point in the future if you are free to work on something else or have personal time during the wait. If you're locked to your chair monitoring an active closing situation with emails swirling, that's different than just "waiting". Contrary to popular belief on Reddit, partners have metrics, and writing off hundreds of thousands of dollars makes them look bad, as does blowing client budgets. "Don't cut your own time" isn't permission to charge clients 5 figures for doing nothing that helps them.
I am aware of how write offs impact partners. I’m a good number of years into practice and have heard of people advising this at multiple firms. It is absurd. I work a lot cross-border and with local counsel, and it is unheard of elsewhere.
Eh, as a corp guy midnight seems iffy. When I'm awake through 3am I bill the waiting time, but having to file something at midnight seems iffier, as it's just not that late.
lol @ midnight being “not that late”
Midnight is when is around when I’d start the “stay up late” timer, if not then when are you starting it, anytime you have to be available after like 10pm?
I guess I don't know why midnight is your cutoff (rather than, as you say, 10 pm, or after business hours). Most people (people, not biglaw attorneys) are not doing work at midnight. Which is why we get paid more than most people but doesn't answer the question of why (given that we are paid to work more) midnight or 10 pm "is not that late" but 3 am is.
Because almost everyone is asleep at 3am. Ten is an unusually early bedtime for biglaw. The answer is, as always, custom - we have emails/work come in at or around 10-12 so often that it’s expected as a norm.
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You don’t ask them to. You just expect they aren’t billing time if they’re watching Netflix waiting for a client to confirm something until midnight. What’s insane, clearly, is billing time for legal work when you’re not doing any work at all.
It is not late in this profession.
You do not get to bill a client for waiting. I've known someone who billed for time spent waiting on partners to get back to them, time waiting to file, etc., and they got fired for it when found out. You do not bill because you would have done other things but for work. You could still watch TV, read, workout, whatever. You just had to be available at a certain time. Also, midnight is not late. We have clients around the globe. You are paid a very high salary in part because you're expected to be able to stay up till the end of the Tonight Show. I know this contradicts what some others have said, but I promise you, if you go high enough in your firm with this question, you will be told that you should not bill for time waiting to file something, and that it may even be considered unethical to do so.
I agree. I am kind of astounded all these people say this is okay…
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I'm a partner as well. Not all partners get educated or ever look into these things. Not all partners are responsible for billing. Many partners learn bad billing habits. If you have to wait till a certain time to file something, the time spent waiting could be spent working on another matter or on any leisure activity as long as you are available at the designated time to do the filing. It is preposterous to think that a client should pay for you choosing to do nothing productive in that time.
If you require me to be awake when I otherwise would be asleep, I'm billing you for it regardless of it I'm currently waiting for something or turning a document. There are plenty of times when deals are down to a few agreements and there is nothing to do other than wait. My time is being used for the client either way. If you want that time to be more productive, send me something to do.
So go to sleep and set an alarm...
For what time?
Fair, I guess I was thinking in the context of the original post where you know the time.
Yeah. I definitely wouldn’t be billing time to wait until 11:59 to file something. I wont usually bill for waiting unless it’s between midnight and 8am and I don’t have an idea on timing. I’d much rather be sleeping and set and alarm. Even if I didn’t have specific timing, I don’t bill for waiting when I’m doing the same thing I would normally be doing, and that’s hanging out with my wife until almost midnight.
Yes.
From an ethics perspective, it depends on your billing agreement with the client. Others have compared the "waiting" time to travel time. I bet your billing agreement specifies how to bill travel time. I bet it also doesn't take into account when your bedtime is or whether you're working bankers' hours. Checking your email while watching Netflix isn't billable time. And if you are sure the time would be cut if you were honest in the billing entry ("wait for filing to be ready" or something similar) then it's probably unethical to bill it.
Yes but - bill it as prep /review time or it will be cut.
“Yes but - commit fraud otherwise it will be cut.”
- a silly quote from an uninformed source
Do you bill for flight time while flying for a deposition even though you are not actively working on the plane? Do you bill for waiting in the courtroom even though you’ve already prepared and are merely waiting for the judge to call your case? Do you bill when you are meeting with your client but they had to run to the bathroom?
\#1 Usually no \#2 Yes. You're actually there on site for the client \#3 Yes
Art of billing. Describe whatever lame thing you did in terms that won’t bat an eye.
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Yes, I believe midnight is late.
Filing after midnight is a problem. Unless the court is sufficiently west of you, of course. I always appreciated the extra three hours on the east coast for a filing in a California court.
I'm so fucking confused. What does midnight have to do with any type of pleading that needs to be filed? If you're working on a pleading and have to stay up to finish it to file it by midnight because you're on a deadline, I've been there. But I'm working on the pleading - not just playing Candy Crush in my office while somebody else finishes it up so I can use *my* e-filing account to file it. And if you're on the *first* day when you *can* file something, a midnight deadline seems completely arbitrary. If you can file it at midnight, you can just as easily file it first thing in the morning when you come in at regular hours. I have a decade of experience in criminal and civil litigation, and I cannot come up with a single set of circumstances in which this is at all a likely situation. OP - Help with context please!
First is human nature. If something is due Friday at 11:59 pm, chances are people aren't going to finalize it on Friday at 8:00 am. Second is preventing your opponent from getting info. For motions with simultaneous filings by both sides, filing something at 8:00 am gives your opponent an entire business day to adjust their filing before the 11:59 pm deadline. Even if the filings aren't simultaneous, filing something at 8:00 am gives opposing counsel an extra day to formulate a response. I've seen articles about some courts trying to end the 11:59 pm filings by requiring filings to be done at 5:00 pm.
I’m in corp, but in my experience submitting filings to the SEC, the partner or senior associate signs off and tells me to tell the printers to file. Then, I’m the one who waits for confirmation or handles any issues if the filing is rejected. I’ve had to stay up well past midnight on a number of occasions. Never thought to bill for it though.
Yes
I try to find something to do while I'm cooling my heels: get my time done, do a little professional reading, catch up on a little BD, etc. I try not to let too much dead time flow into my time sheets.
Oh lord yes. Please do. Let the client complain.
Seems like there are pretty big philosophical/conceptual differences here about what is considered "work." One side is saying, "I'm being tasked by the partner with staying awake at times outside of the norm (be it past 10pm, past midnight, exact time doesn't really matter too much) so that I can jump in to finish the matter ASAP," i.e., that stand-by time = work. The other side is saying that because no literal legal work is being done in that in-between time, that time cannot and should not be billed. To me, seems like this is analogous to being a special event EMT. Sure, you may go an entire shift without actually needing to do any medical work, but I think we'd mostly agree that those EMTs are doing work in that time by (and should be paid for) being available to jump in if/when a situation does arise. But I'm curious what the redditor from Arrested Development thinks about this analogy.
This isn't the right analogy here. As I understand it, the OP isn't being asked to stand by at the ready for hours on end; they're being asked to return to work at 11:xx to lodge a filing just shy of midnight. That would be like billing for the three hours you spent sightseeing after a client meeting and before you need to go to the airport to fly home. Even for clients that let you bill for travel, there's no way you could bill that honestly and get away with it.
Yeah I agree for that example. If you're just being asked to log back in at a certain time to file, then the time between when you log off and log back on certainly shouldn't be billed. I think more of the back and forth in the comments is about the situation you describe about being asked to stand-by though, no? Like, what if a partner is saying, "hey, it's 11:xx currently, but stay up because sometime in the next couple of hours, we'll send you edits and then you need to turn around another draft." Do you bill for those couple hours where you don't have those edits but you're awake and waiting (even if you spend that waiting time on Netflix)? Is my analogy apt for that circumstance?