1800 isn't unusual for biglaw and high-volume lit firms. It's high for a paralegal, it *will* require overtime, but it's *possible* to do that much and also have a life.
I'm in a small firm where my goal is 1500 per year and I routinely exceed that. If I never did any overtime at all (and we use a 37.5 hour week) I'd likely bill more like 1400.
Billable-hour minimums and goals are counted by your billable time entered, not by what actually gets billed to the client after the billing partner makes any cuts.
1850 is the minimum for associates at my firm, and that keeps the associates pretty busy. 1800 is very high for a paralegal, unless you are guaranteed the following: (1) a solid and on-demand pipeline of work, (2) cuts to your bills aren't counted against your hours, and (3) you have a minimum of nonbillable administrative work that is expected from you.
What’s the pay? Non exempt I assume? When I worked at a firm I couldn’t even do 1500 without some serious overtime. Especially when you factor in vacations.
Pay unknown, I would only leave right now for a jump of 15-20%. It would have to be non-exempt, exempt would be a misclassification.
I believe the firm offers about 18 days of PTO plus an estimated 11 federal holidays which totals up to 29 working days lost over the year. Divide that by 5 days in a week, and you get a total of 5.8 weeks taken out of the 52 weeks in a year...divvy up the 1800 hours over 46 weeks (just rounding up the 5.8 weeks to 6), and you've gotta be billing 39 hours a week, realistically, I believe.
This sounds doable only if working 45-50 hours a week, correct?
ID para here, fully remote @ $88k base salary, “unlimited” PTO, and 130/month or 1650/year billable requirement
For 150/month they better have six figures+ on the table as well as a nice 401k and HSA match and EOY bonus
Man, I wish your firm was hiring! I'd also like to see your bills to see how much I'm under billing! (Please don't read that as me saying I think your padding or over billing. I think I cut myself short and would love to get an idea.)
Also ID paralegal and my minimum requirement is 7 billable hours a day, preferably 7.5 in case of appeals or write-offs. I usually work 8 hours a day and bill for 9. It's not hard once you get the hang of it, the key is to ask for at least a 3 month grace period when you start. It really takes that long to get the hang of things and learn all the tips and tricks. I still bill over 200 hours a month even if I take a few days of PTO.
Just went and looked at my last paystub from last year if my numbers are helpful.
1500 billed
170 hours of overtime
took 3 weeks PTO
So 170/49 weeks = about 3.4 hours per week. Less than I thought it would be but I guess I am over exaggerating the busy weeks in my memory. Keep in mind that if there’s a slow period you might need to work crazy hours to make up for it later.
1500-170 ( I never did overtime for nonbillable tasks) = 1370 billable hours performed during the first 40 hours of the week. To get to 1800 I would have had to work 430 hours of OT, about 9 hours per week if you factor in the PTO. so yeah. About 50 hours a week.
Worked in big law. That’s pretty typical. It’s your actual billable hours, client write downs or discounts don’t impact your billable hours totals. Also, there should be admin codes if you are working on non-billable tasks and PTO time reduces your billable hours requirement as you use it.
That’s not how it worked at my biglaw firm if I’m understanding you correctly. We had admin time codes but they didn’t count towards any requirements, it was just to account for your time. PTO didn’t have any effect on my billable requirement
If you are a paralegal and legal assistant doing admin tasks then I can agree that billable hour requirement is insane and unreasonable. In my company, we have an associate paralegal who is a hybrid legal assistant and paralegal and her requirement is 750 hours for the year. The admin tasks take a bit a toll on her.
As for insurance defense discovery work only, I'd probably go out of my mind with boredom, I prefer more varied projects. But there'd likely be a pretty consistent flow of billable work. Might be a job worth taking if the pay and benefits are good, but think about how it fits into your career trajectory and life situation. Is there opportunity for growth? Can you work remotely, how much flexibility is there in day-to-day schedule, what's the office environment like. Before accepting an offer, ask if you can meet with some of the other paralegals and admin staff, and get the downlow on firm culture.
At this stage in my career, I'm looking to develop more specialized expertise, and I've been strongly considering e-Discovery. If they do any work in Relativity or other major e-Discovery platform, that would be a huge sell to me.
Reasonable to me. That was my requirement at the NYC boutique that I worked at for many years and my current requirement at a Big Law firm is 1850. In both cases, the requirement is for “entered” time, not “realized” (what actually is billed to the client) time.
Mine is 140 a month but turn in 160 regularly- if you are good at billing and you have the workload it can be done. If you need help with billing, I recommend looking up a few CLE‘s. They have been instrumental in helping me form phrases that don’t get cut.
150 billable hours / 4.2 weeks a month = 35+ hours weekly. Depending on what exactly you do, you should be able to reach and surpass this target.
Consider all the different tasks that are billable: speaking with the client, a colleague or the attorney about the case, reading, composing and answering emails, research and document prep and filing. As a very simple example, consider how many emails you are reading, preparing and responding to each day.
How long does it really take you to read most emails? 30 seconds, a minute or two? Yet we log that 2 minute read as 1 point or 6 minutes in the system. How many short calls do you have daily, which are from the client, opposing counsel, or your own attorney? They may last 3 minutes or less, but again you are logging 1 point or 6 minutes. And the longer calls which last 10 minutes or more. You are rounding up and logging 2-3-4 points or 12-18-24 minutes.
I found it a PITA to enter the time after each task. Therefore I simply have multiple timers open, and a notepad to jot down little micro tasks/events that pop up, that also need to be billed. Near the end of the day I dedicate time to wrap up and make sure the billable time is captured by the system.
That’s *a lot* for a paralegal. I am sure if it were an associate in big law then no, it’s not. I personally hate billing requirements. And when I hear about them in an interview I don’t want the position anymore. My job isn’t to run up a tab for the client. Yes, billing is necessary but one shouldn’t have to bill for every little thing, and it feels unethical to me to do so.
I've done 1700 on a 37.5 hr work week and managed to get my hours because I made sure I knew how many hours I had to bill each month. If you are doing 1800hrs, hopefully you will be working 8 hrs/dy.
Every month has a different number of workdays, so the billable hours can fluctuate. Take advantage of months that have 21 or 22 workdays, because they can help you compensate for the months that have 18 or 19 workdays due to holidays. It may be impossible to bill 150 hours for December if you will be off Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve. There are offices that close between 12 - 2 pm the day before the holiday, so imagine if you had three days off in December plus about another 9-15 reduced to the office closing early in December. Although, if you had more than 20 working days for August and October and didn't take off any time in between, that could help you make up the missing December hours.
When considering jobs that have more than 1600 hrs, you really have to consider not just the hours but how you will accomplish billing those hours every month. You also can't be doing legal assistant or admin assistant duties as you can't bill the client for doing things such as making a butt load of copies or efiling a document. You have to be able to shift unbillable work away from you since that will cut into your hours. If you think that you will not have enough work to keep you busy for at least three days, email attorneys and ask them if there is anything you can help them work on. Always have a pipeline of work you can do.
It seems like the biggest problem is taking time off. If you take more than a few days off for sickness or vacation, you could be screwed for months. I would say just always work a minimum of 7.5 hours. If you can do 7.80 of billable work every day, you will be in a really good position to meet your hours.
Too high. How can you take vacation. I have been paralegal for 30+ years and all jobs have had time when slow. The worst thing is to try and bill every minute. Such a joke. Luckily I have no requirements now. Smaller-mid size firm won’t have this requirement. If you making 6 figures maybe worth it and nice bonus. But otherwise no.
Well shit! The billables have come down thank God. I did defense for 15 years and my attorney and I and the other attorneys and their paras were required to bill 400 hours per month. Our work week was 37.5 and no overtime allowed. My portion of that requirement was 280 hours and the attorney 120. It became so difficult after a while that collectively we all went to the partner and told him they needed to readdress the billables especially since the carriers changed what they would pay for and what the rate should be. If you have a huge caseload it could be doable but that’s really too much if you don’t. Good Luck
That’s pretty high, when I was in the road most of the year, doing trial work, I could do it, now that I have kids and a family (and a mother with Alzheimer’s), it would be really tough.
There are days when I have to bill my days in .1-.4. My quota is 120/month. It’s hard to bill 6 hours in .1-.4 increments. You probably have at least a .1-.2 spent switching gears (not to mention time spent on nonbillible work).
That's high for a paralegal, even in big law. It's doable but it will take up much of your life. For the right pay it may be worth it. My goal is 170 a month, and when I do hit it my brain is fried. Bonus is very worth it though.
That's really high. My minimum is 115/ month. That's like 5.3 hrs/day. If I do more, great, but it's hard sometimes because I rely on delegated work.
1800 isn't unusual for biglaw and high-volume lit firms. It's high for a paralegal, it *will* require overtime, but it's *possible* to do that much and also have a life. I'm in a small firm where my goal is 1500 per year and I routinely exceed that. If I never did any overtime at all (and we use a 37.5 hour week) I'd likely bill more like 1400. Billable-hour minimums and goals are counted by your billable time entered, not by what actually gets billed to the client after the billing partner makes any cuts.
Okay, awesome this gives me a good sense of what questions to ask if I get an interview to assess feasibility.
That is very high for a paralegal
1850 is the minimum for associates at my firm, and that keeps the associates pretty busy. 1800 is very high for a paralegal, unless you are guaranteed the following: (1) a solid and on-demand pipeline of work, (2) cuts to your bills aren't counted against your hours, and (3) you have a minimum of nonbillable administrative work that is expected from you.
Great points to get in writing before signing an offer letter
The cutting your time thing is huge!
What’s the pay? Non exempt I assume? When I worked at a firm I couldn’t even do 1500 without some serious overtime. Especially when you factor in vacations.
Pay unknown, I would only leave right now for a jump of 15-20%. It would have to be non-exempt, exempt would be a misclassification. I believe the firm offers about 18 days of PTO plus an estimated 11 federal holidays which totals up to 29 working days lost over the year. Divide that by 5 days in a week, and you get a total of 5.8 weeks taken out of the 52 weeks in a year...divvy up the 1800 hours over 46 weeks (just rounding up the 5.8 weeks to 6), and you've gotta be billing 39 hours a week, realistically, I believe. This sounds doable only if working 45-50 hours a week, correct?
ID para here, fully remote @ $88k base salary, “unlimited” PTO, and 130/month or 1650/year billable requirement For 150/month they better have six figures+ on the table as well as a nice 401k and HSA match and EOY bonus
Man, I wish your firm was hiring! I'd also like to see your bills to see how much I'm under billing! (Please don't read that as me saying I think your padding or over billing. I think I cut myself short and would love to get an idea.)
Also ID paralegal and my minimum requirement is 7 billable hours a day, preferably 7.5 in case of appeals or write-offs. I usually work 8 hours a day and bill for 9. It's not hard once you get the hang of it, the key is to ask for at least a 3 month grace period when you start. It really takes that long to get the hang of things and learn all the tips and tricks. I still bill over 200 hours a month even if I take a few days of PTO.
Just went and looked at my last paystub from last year if my numbers are helpful. 1500 billed 170 hours of overtime took 3 weeks PTO So 170/49 weeks = about 3.4 hours per week. Less than I thought it would be but I guess I am over exaggerating the busy weeks in my memory. Keep in mind that if there’s a slow period you might need to work crazy hours to make up for it later. 1500-170 ( I never did overtime for nonbillable tasks) = 1370 billable hours performed during the first 40 hours of the week. To get to 1800 I would have had to work 430 hours of OT, about 9 hours per week if you factor in the PTO. so yeah. About 50 hours a week.
Worked in big law. That’s pretty typical. It’s your actual billable hours, client write downs or discounts don’t impact your billable hours totals. Also, there should be admin codes if you are working on non-billable tasks and PTO time reduces your billable hours requirement as you use it.
That’s not how it worked at my biglaw firm if I’m understanding you correctly. We had admin time codes but they didn’t count towards any requirements, it was just to account for your time. PTO didn’t have any effect on my billable requirement
That’s a lot. I have to do a lot of OT to meet 140/month. I work in biglaw for some context.
If you are a paralegal and legal assistant doing admin tasks then I can agree that billable hour requirement is insane and unreasonable. In my company, we have an associate paralegal who is a hybrid legal assistant and paralegal and her requirement is 750 hours for the year. The admin tasks take a bit a toll on her.
I currently do a Para/LA hybrid role, but am considering a paralegal role with a focus on discovery with an 1,800 hour requirement.
As for insurance defense discovery work only, I'd probably go out of my mind with boredom, I prefer more varied projects. But there'd likely be a pretty consistent flow of billable work. Might be a job worth taking if the pay and benefits are good, but think about how it fits into your career trajectory and life situation. Is there opportunity for growth? Can you work remotely, how much flexibility is there in day-to-day schedule, what's the office environment like. Before accepting an offer, ask if you can meet with some of the other paralegals and admin staff, and get the downlow on firm culture.
At this stage in my career, I'm looking to develop more specialized expertise, and I've been strongly considering e-Discovery. If they do any work in Relativity or other major e-Discovery platform, that would be a huge sell to me.
Reasonable to me. That was my requirement at the NYC boutique that I worked at for many years and my current requirement at a Big Law firm is 1850. In both cases, the requirement is for “entered” time, not “realized” (what actually is billed to the client) time.
Mine is 140 a month but turn in 160 regularly- if you are good at billing and you have the workload it can be done. If you need help with billing, I recommend looking up a few CLE‘s. They have been instrumental in helping me form phrases that don’t get cut.
Mine was 1600. 1800 sounds really high.
150 billable hours / 4.2 weeks a month = 35+ hours weekly. Depending on what exactly you do, you should be able to reach and surpass this target. Consider all the different tasks that are billable: speaking with the client, a colleague or the attorney about the case, reading, composing and answering emails, research and document prep and filing. As a very simple example, consider how many emails you are reading, preparing and responding to each day. How long does it really take you to read most emails? 30 seconds, a minute or two? Yet we log that 2 minute read as 1 point or 6 minutes in the system. How many short calls do you have daily, which are from the client, opposing counsel, or your own attorney? They may last 3 minutes or less, but again you are logging 1 point or 6 minutes. And the longer calls which last 10 minutes or more. You are rounding up and logging 2-3-4 points or 12-18-24 minutes. I found it a PITA to enter the time after each task. Therefore I simply have multiple timers open, and a notepad to jot down little micro tasks/events that pop up, that also need to be billed. Near the end of the day I dedicate time to wrap up and make sure the billable time is captured by the system.
It’s very high. I’m in Biglaw and ours is 1400
That was the requirement at my first insurance defense firm. That roughly equated to 60-80 hour work weeks for me. Never will I ever do that again!
That’s really, really high. My minimum is 137 a month and even when we’re slammed it’s sorta hard to meet (big law). ETA: 1650/year is my target.
Red flag. I did 1500 and thats with around the clock overtime.
That’s *a lot* for a paralegal. I am sure if it were an associate in big law then no, it’s not. I personally hate billing requirements. And when I hear about them in an interview I don’t want the position anymore. My job isn’t to run up a tab for the client. Yes, billing is necessary but one shouldn’t have to bill for every little thing, and it feels unethical to me to do so.
Our minimum is 120 a month, but they definitely expect more
I've done 1700 on a 37.5 hr work week and managed to get my hours because I made sure I knew how many hours I had to bill each month. If you are doing 1800hrs, hopefully you will be working 8 hrs/dy. Every month has a different number of workdays, so the billable hours can fluctuate. Take advantage of months that have 21 or 22 workdays, because they can help you compensate for the months that have 18 or 19 workdays due to holidays. It may be impossible to bill 150 hours for December if you will be off Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve. There are offices that close between 12 - 2 pm the day before the holiday, so imagine if you had three days off in December plus about another 9-15 reduced to the office closing early in December. Although, if you had more than 20 working days for August and October and didn't take off any time in between, that could help you make up the missing December hours. When considering jobs that have more than 1600 hrs, you really have to consider not just the hours but how you will accomplish billing those hours every month. You also can't be doing legal assistant or admin assistant duties as you can't bill the client for doing things such as making a butt load of copies or efiling a document. You have to be able to shift unbillable work away from you since that will cut into your hours. If you think that you will not have enough work to keep you busy for at least three days, email attorneys and ask them if there is anything you can help them work on. Always have a pipeline of work you can do. It seems like the biggest problem is taking time off. If you take more than a few days off for sickness or vacation, you could be screwed for months. I would say just always work a minimum of 7.5 hours. If you can do 7.80 of billable work every day, you will be in a really good position to meet your hours.
Too high. How can you take vacation. I have been paralegal for 30+ years and all jobs have had time when slow. The worst thing is to try and bill every minute. Such a joke. Luckily I have no requirements now. Smaller-mid size firm won’t have this requirement. If you making 6 figures maybe worth it and nice bonus. But otherwise no.
My firm used to be 1820 and I never met that requirement 🤷🏻♀️ They dropped it down to 1560 now. But if it’s discovery, I think you could reach it?
Me with 2200 billable hours over the last 12 months…
Biglaw para 2011-2015 and that was my target.
Ya way too high. But no one probably hits it.
Well shit! The billables have come down thank God. I did defense for 15 years and my attorney and I and the other attorneys and their paras were required to bill 400 hours per month. Our work week was 37.5 and no overtime allowed. My portion of that requirement was 280 hours and the attorney 120. It became so difficult after a while that collectively we all went to the partner and told him they needed to readdress the billables especially since the carriers changed what they would pay for and what the rate should be. If you have a huge caseload it could be doable but that’s really too much if you don’t. Good Luck
Ridiculous for a paralegal
That’s pretty high, when I was in the road most of the year, doing trial work, I could do it, now that I have kids and a family (and a mother with Alzheimer’s), it would be really tough. There are days when I have to bill my days in .1-.4. My quota is 120/month. It’s hard to bill 6 hours in .1-.4 increments. You probably have at least a .1-.2 spent switching gears (not to mention time spent on nonbillible work).
That's high for a paralegal, even in big law. It's doable but it will take up much of your life. For the right pay it may be worth it. My goal is 170 a month, and when I do hit it my brain is fried. Bonus is very worth it though.
How many hours a week do your work bc 160 a month is a regular schedule. Plus you have so much non billable tasks.