When you work with a lawyer, you may wonder how your final bill comes together. Law firms use billable hours to charge clients. Essentially, any time a lawyer spends on your case—like researching, making calls, or going to court — adds to your bill. This explains how fees are calculated in many legal cases.
This blog will explain billable hours, how lawyers track them, and why they matter. Whether you’re a client or a lawyer, understanding billable hours is important to know how they affect costs and workload in the legal process.
What are Billable Hours?
Lawyers generate bills based on their hours working on a client’s case. This includes legal research, writing documents, attending meetings, going to court, and any other task they perform for your case.
Lawyers track their time carefully, usually in small increments, such as six or fifteen minutes. They multiplied the lawyer’s hourly rate by the total billable hours to calculate the cost. Understanding billable hours helps clients know what they are paying for and allows law firms to charge fairly for their work.
Why Tracking Billable Hours Matters for Attorneys?
Attorneys don’t get paid directly based on their billable hours, but tracking them is still important for the overall success of a law firm. Many firms set minimum billable hour targets for associates, and bonuses are often linked to meeting these goals. If a lawyer’s billable hours fall too low, they could face layoffs as firms try to reduce costs.
For equity partners, billable hours are even more crucial. While they get a base salary, a big part of their income comes from their share of the firm’s profits. After covering business expenses, the remaining profits are shared among the equity partners. If the firm doesn’t meet its billable hour goals, it can lead to lower earnings for the partners.
What is a Billable Hours Chart?
If you need a quick way to figure out how much to charge for partial hours worked, this billable hours chart can help. It breaks time into 1/10th of an hour increments. For example, if your hourly rate is $100, and you worked for 15 minutes, you’d check the chart and see that 15 minutes equals 0.3. Multiply that by your rate—0.3 x $100—and you’d bill $30.
| Time Increment | Minutes |
| 0.1 | 1-6 minutes |
| 0.2 | 7-12 minutes |
| 0.3 | 13- 18 minutes |
| 0.4 | 19-24 minutes |
| 0.5 | 25-30 minutes |
| 0.6 | 31-36 minutes |
| 0.7 | 37-42 minutes |
| 0.8 | 43-48 minutes |
| 0.9 | 49-54 minutes |
| 1.0 | 55-60 minutes |
Manage Billable Hours Easily with Legal Software
A billable hours chart helps with quick calculations, but legal practice management software does much more. CaseFox saves time, ensures accuracy, and makes tracking hours effortless in multiple ways:
Never Miss a Billable Minute with Automatic Time Tracking
An automatic timer runs discreetly while you work on your cases, capturing time without interruptions. This helps you record accurate billable hours effortlessly. With time-tracking software for lawyers, you can focus on your work while it takes care of the time.
Track Your Time Anytime, Anywhere
Easily track your work hours with a real-time timer that keeps you organized. Start the timer when you begin, stop it when you’re done, and pause if you get interrupted. Accurate minute-by-minute recording helps you manage your billable hours without extra effort.
Ensure Accuracy by Reviewing Time Entries
After recording your time, you can review and make changes easily. Add extra time if needed, mark entries as billable or no charge, and update records. You can also write detailed notes, categorize tasks, and account for every minute. This helps keep your time tracking accurate, organized, and ready for invoicing without any hassle.
Easy Timekeeping with Text Message Logging
Need a quick and easy way to track your time while on the go? With SMS timekeeping, you can log your billable hours simply by sending a text message from your phone—no need to open an app or log in. Just add your mobile number under the Staff tab, and you’re all set to record time effortlessly, anytime, anywhere.
Generate Accurate Time Tracking Reports
Easily create detailed reports of your time entries without the hassle. With legal time management software, you can generate reports based on cases, clients, or staff. Export them in formats like Excel or PDF for easy access and sharing.
You might also like these posts:
– How Lawyers Use Billable Hours Chart To Track Time
– How To Increase Your Billable Hours A Day?
– A Guide to Time Tracking Software for Lawyers
The Difference Between Billable and Non-Billable Hours in Law Firms
Billable hours bring in revenue, while non-billable tasks keep a law firm running smoothly. Balancing both is key to efficiency and growth.
Billable Hours
Billable hours refer to the time a law firm spends working on a specific client’s case or legal matter that can be directly charged to that client. Since these hours directly impact revenue, law firms put significant effort into accurately tracking and managing them.
Non-Billable Hours
Non-billable hours cannot be charged to a client but are still essential for running a law firm effectively. These may include tasks like professional development, firm meetings, responding to emails, and networking. While there’s no set requirement for non-billable hours, spending too much time on them reduces the available time for billable work.
How to Know If Your Work Is Billable or Non-Billable?
New law practitioners and other professionals surely find client billing to be a complex matter. To best estimate time and effort, it’s tricky to distinguish what is easily chargeable and what isn’t. To solve this problem, a practical approach can be implemented in which the lawyer’s time is billed based on predefined tests.
Consider these key questions:
- Was the activity necessary for the fulfillment of the case or project?
- Is the time allocated for the benefit of the lawyer or the requirements of the client?
- Measurable within the bounds of the client’s instructions?
- Was time spent on rectifying an easily preventable blunder? For example, a lawyer deletes a file by mistake and has to rebuild the file, and this time, work might not get billed.
Conclusion
A law firm requires billable hours for profits, but non-billable activities contribute to increased growth and improved efficiency. Successful management requires lawyers to control their billable work volume along with other tasks they need to handle appropriately. Time-tracking solutions enable lawyers to provide proper billing services and maintain organization. Firms that adopt appropriate tools and methods will accomplish efficient billing practices to minimize errors while adequately billing for their services.