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A Haven For Straight Talk: <b>The Billable Hour: If You're Gonna Use It ... Use It!</b>

By ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |

Anyone familiar with this column, or my rantings in a variety of other locations (blatant plug for my blog here, http://legalmarketing.typepad.com/blog), knows that I'm not a huge fan of the billable hour. I think it drives a certain kind of “wrong think” about the value of working smart vs. working long. Law firm management folks also tend to use the billable hour as the one “uber number” to drive all other considerations ' including marketing ' aside. Like they say, when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

What surprises me even further about the billable hour, though, is how little its use is exploited as a marketing and business tool. All this time and effort are put into keeping track of lawyers' time in 10th of an hour increments … and then it is simply used for its lowest-common-denominator purpose: Billing. That's like spending $4,000 on an African Grey parrot, training it for 2 years to engage in complex conversation … and then eating it.

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