I am a mid-level associate at a big law firm. I am not sure if you know this but we bill our time to clients by the quarter hour or less. (I think Brooke would hate this price structure because she always says – accurately- that people’s productivity differs so much!!) But there is a ton of time where lawyers are “working” (aka at the office) but not actually billing time. From either that or from not tracking my time accurately and vigilantly, my billable hours are lower than the number of hours I spend at work.

My goal for September is to bill a certain number of hours. With two planned vacation days and Labor Day holiday budgeted in, this requires working 9-7 every weekday with an hour built in there for unbillable time for stuff like eating lunch, personal emails, or talking to coworkers. This may sound like a lot of hours for some people, but it’s actually sounding really great to me and it would be very freeing to get the hours in in that time frame. It also assumes I would not work at all on weekends, vacations, and holidays, which is not likely to be the case.

I really love my job and it would be great to have the ability to slot the work into my day and then be able to rest and know that I’m getting enough done. I would like to avoid a future scenario where I feel like my work hours are not compatible with what else I want to or need to do in life (whether my health, relationships, family etc ). By getting good at using my work time more efficiently, I can avoid this.

I guess I don’t really have a question- just wanted to run it by you and seek some feedback and/or encouragement 🙂 thank you!