"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."
– John D. Rockefeller
Less than five billable hours yesterday, a low for the last several weeks. Last month I billed around 160 hours, the most in a single month in over a year. And that was while taking over a day off to attend Uncle Pat's funeral.
Sometimes I think the value of time, my time, actually diminishes because I keep such careful track of it as a part of my profession. Google lawyers and billable hours, and you will find that time is an obsession for those who practice in law firms. Originally formulated by institutional clients to force a measure of objectivity to what they were being charged for legal services, time-billing now has become the main facet of the practice of law that measures our worth to our clients and to our firms, and over the span of a career the practice of monitoring our time becomes the framework by which we measure not just our productivity, but our life.
And that's the rub--it's one thing to write down a ".3" after dictating a letter or a short motion, then at the end of the day tally up the entries either with satisfaction upon finding seven or eight hours of time turned into money, assuming bills get paid, or disappointment at a 4.8 that keeps me at the desk a little while longer. But too often, for me at least, this relentless need to make every moment count in a pecuniary sense creeps into everything else. My sister calls to complain that she's having trouble filling out the beneficiary paperwork for Mom's annuity, and I'm trying to get her off the phone because this conversation is costing me a fortune. I bring my computer to the table if I eat a sandwich for lunch so I can review documents and charge for my meal break. I've brought my dictaphone into the restroom so I can stay on the clock while taking a constitutional. If I'm in the office and a co-worker comes to my door, I find myself glaring at them after a couple minutes, thinking they're engaging in some sort of vocational murder-suicide by telling a story about a sick child or jawboning about last Saturday's football game. Don't they have their own billable hour goal to meet?
Of course, the goal is entirely in my own head at this point. Our firm, like most, imposes a billable hour "goal" for all of the attorneys--if you consistently come up short as an associate, you'll find when you don't make partner that it wasn't so much a goal as a requirement. Ours is 1800 per year. When I was at the big Atlanta law firm, it was 1920 (160 a month). These days some insurance defense firms demand 2400 or more, basically inviting fraudulent billing unless their young lawyers stay at the office for 18 hours a day (and many do).
But at this phase of my work-life no one's monitoring my time except me. I won't hit my goal this year, but the only person disturbed by that is pecking out this blog.
Most lawyers I know hate the billable hour system. When friends have left to handle plaintiffs' personal injury cases, the thing they tell me they love the most is never having to keep track of their time. But try to get a client to accept some alternative billing system, and you'll encounter immediate resistance. Whenever the lawyer suggests a different arrangement, the client assumes the motive is financial. The same has been true in my experience when the proposed change comes from the other side of the transaction--I once agreed to handle insurance cases for a major carrier on a block billing basis, being paid for each phase of litigation. We dumped the engagement after a few months when we realized we were working harder for far less money, and the carrier moved on to another, more financially desperate, attorney.
This idol we've raised, I've raised, has come at a very high price. No, I won't meet you for lunch most days because I cringe at the cost of the meal, taking into account my time. Relatives know not to call me during the week or they're liable to get voicemail or a snarl over the phone about how not all of us have limitless time to chat during the workweek. Some of those relatives are dead now. I wish I'd taken the call.
My exercise regimen has mostly collapsed. Side projects that might provide a path to something better in my life sit either as half-baked plans or unfinished, because eventually the gnawing sense that I need to be billing overtakes the will to pursue a better life.
This blog has almost died several times. It takes me, what, thirty to forty minutes to write this? That's over $200. I rationalize it as cheaper than therapy, and maybe will provide an amusing read in a few years when I'm sitting in a diaper in an assisted living facility. So, that's how you spent the last healthy years of your life? Brilliant.
I sound negative, but really I'm not Putting a finger on the problem, the habit, is the first step toward addressing it. My work is a big part of who I am, but it's not all that I am. This way of living developed when I was mostly unhappy and all too willing to immerse myself in work. Things are different now---if Peg's home I don't want to be at work, don't want clients interrupting supper with billable calls. We don't have forever; she needs to be the focus when we're together.
And maybe gradually in this next phase of life, I won't be able to tell you how many hours I billed this week or this year, because time brings so many other good things. Work is necessary and a source of virtue and meaning. But it can't be one's master. I see that now.
When P comes through the door these days from work, or I leave the office knowing I'll come through the door to her padding around the kitchen in bare feet and an apron (I know what you're thinking, and yes she's wearing clothes; get your mind out of the gutter), whipping up some amazing culinary creation, I feel like Fred Flintstone surfing down the Brontosaurus's tail when the whistle signals the end of his shift.
It's a start.
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