Innovation in billing: the lawyers are eating our lunch

First up in the ABA Journal, Morgan Lewis announces it is ditching the billable hour. Well sort of. It’s de-emphasizing the billable hour as a component driving bonuses for its staff. I’m sure its associates will be delighted, especially when you note that the bar starts at 2,000 hours pa. Given that US lawyers are used to billing in 6 minute increments, that’s a heck of a lot of time on the job just to get to 2,000 hours. When I was in practice, we reckoned to be lucky to get 1,400. It was a good reason for dropping that measure because you were always clock watching instead of concentrating on what needed to get done.

Then comes the Wall Street Journal Law Blog where:

Evan Chesler, a Cravath lifer and the firm’s presiding partner, has become the most recent high-profile lawyer to call for the end of the billable hour. In the upcoming issue of Forbes, in an article called “Kill the Billable Hour,” he writes: “The billable hour makes no sense, not even for lawyers. If you are successful and win a case early on, you put yourself out of work. If you get bogged down in a land war in Asia, you make more money. That is frankly nuts.”

That’s fighting talk and in the following interview, Evan provides plenty of solid reasons why he thinks this way and the challenges that face his firm. Rather than spoil the fun, just hop over and check it out.

I’m thinking that Ron Baker and the folks down at Verasage will be hopping with delight. As always, with these things, there is a tinge of sadness for me. When am I going to hear about the professional accountants getting with the program? C’mon guys and gals – the lawyers are eating our lunch on a bunch of issues. It’s embarrassing.

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Tagged as: billing, Cravath Swaine & Moore, Law firm, Ron Baker