Jump to content

  1. Forums

    1. 271
      posts
    2. Meta

      Discussions about the forums or the Discord server.

      340
      posts
  2. Applicants

    1. General

      General discussion about law schools or your applications.

      6k
      posts
    2. 4.4k
      posts
    3. School Comparisons

      U of T vs. Osgoode, Queens vs. Western, so on and so forth: Get advice about which school is better to go to over another.

      2.2k
      posts
    4. LSAT (Law School Admission Test)

      Questions, study tips, and general discussion about the LSAT.

      773
      posts
    5. Student Financial Support

      Questions about lines of credit, loans, and paying for law school.

      485
      posts
    6. Buy/Sell

      For applicants or law students looking to offer books / prep materials for purchase or sale.

      111
      posts
  3. Law Schools

    1. 902
      posts
    2. 1.1k
      posts
    3. 1.1k
      posts
    4. 1.2k
      posts
    5. 1.1k
      posts
    6. 635
      posts
    7. 531
      posts
    8. 184
      posts
    9. 1.5k
      posts
    10. 756
      posts
    11. 1.8k
      posts
    12. 2.5k
      posts
    13. 792
      posts
    14. 1.1k
      posts
    15. 719
      posts
    16. 537
      posts
    17. 298
      posts
    18. 29
      posts
    19. 772
      posts
    20. 425
      posts
    21. 1.9k
      posts
  4. Law Students & Articling Students

    1. 2.5k
      posts
    2. 3.3k
      posts
    3. Jobs

      OCIs, summer jobs, applying for articling.

      7.1k
      posts
  5. Lawyers

    1. Ask a Lawyer

      Not a lawyer but have a question about what it's like to be one?

      2k
      posts
    2. 2.1k
      posts
    3. 79
      posts
      • WUDALA
    4. 235
      posts
    5. 601
      posts
    6. 240
      posts
    7. 107
      posts
    8. 13
      posts
    9. 125
      posts
    10. 149
      posts
    11. 73
      posts
  6. Off-Topic

    1. 6.2k
      posts
    2. 1.9k
      posts
    3. 2.6k
      posts
  • Who's Online   36 Members, 2 Anonymous, 89 Guests (See full list)

    • doggoford
    • Yogurt Baron
    • myth000
    • am0229
    • jimmy991
    • Iclown
    • TomCarnivalCruise
    • Scrantonicity2
    • Propertylawnotmything
    • scooter
    • soundofconfusion
    • Goblin King
    • anaolah
    • Misfit
    • acatinthesun
    • chaboywb
    • Dinsdale
    • xiaomaomi
    • AKS2024
    • bubby77
    • PhoenixWrightHopeful
    • JohnsonWest
    • Diplock
    • pleaseletmein
    • BeRightBack
    • Ugotthis
    • CleanHands
    • muffinman
    • Shaolin
    • chrysanthemum
    • helloall
    • legal2024
    • Mia
    • CB2021
    • GGrievous
    • GoatDuck


  • Recent Posts

    • Diplock
      Just to add to my points above, I don't want to engage with @myth000 any more because whether he realizes it or not (and I don't think he does) he's sucking us all into sealion territory. And thank you to this forum for teaching me about that lately. Great term to have available. Because what we're talking about here is something that lawyers in real practice know and feel on a day-to-day level, but proving it somehow is damn near impossible. I want to step away from proving it for a moment and bring this back to reality. Talking about legal billings as though it's a topic divorced from the delivery of legal services is a mistake only a law student or perhaps a very green associate could ever make. Clients are paying to get work done - they don't care very much how it gets done as long as it gets done well. We can talk about marketing and the stupid things that clients care about that they shouldn't some other time, but the real task is simply getting the job done at a reasonable price. If a firm can do that, anything else is solvable. So, let's stop talking about what a student can be billed at completely, okay? Because that is genuinely a distraction. If three hours of a student's time billed at $150/hour can add significantly more value to a file than one hour of a mid-tier associate's time billed at $450/hour then absolutely that student is contributing value. Which means that the bill should be paid willingly by a client (because the work is getting done) and the student should be compensated well for their work (because the firm is generating value). The question was never "is a client going to pay this bill when practice management software spits it out at them?" The question is "can the student actually deliver meaningful value on the file by working those hours?" If the answer is "yes" we're in the territory just mentioned. If the answer is "no" we're in fantasy land, as advocated by @myth000 where the value is irrelevant if you just bill the time. That's why any time someone asks what students should be paid, knowledgeable lawyers want to talk about what that student can contribute in terms of meaningful value with their work - not how a bill gets generated. And the reality is, almost all of the time, a completely green summer student takes more time to supervise than their work is actually worth. In a practice where that isn't true, we can absolutely be talking about what that student deserves to earn. In a practice where it is true, the student is a net loss and more an investment in the future than an income-generating asset. I mean, honestly, if you've ever done HR work you know that onboarding a new employee at all - even a fully trained professional - takes significant time and investment. That's why unnecessary churn in a workforce is detrimental to any business. It strains credibility to imagine bringing on a student for just the summer is going to generate profit. That would have to be one star student, with significant related skills, ready to hit the ground running. Just saying. Anyway. I'm not unwilling to have a conversation about this. But let's talk reality. The marketplace pays for actual work. Billings reflect reality. If students generate meaningfully valuable work for their employers during the summers they are employed, significantly in excess of the costs of having them in the first place, then that is the argument for paying them well. And that's true, btw, even if their time never appears on a bill. What they are billed at, or even if they are billed at all, is a complete distraction from the meaningful question at hand.  
    • myth000
      I find your response to be more focused on attacking me personally than addressing the substance of the discussion. Your assumptions about my attitude, motivations, and background are not only unhelpful but also largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. I'm here to have a fact-based discussion about legal billing practices and economics, not to be psychoanalyzed or condescended to by a stranger on the internet. If you have actual data or evidence that refutes the 80% recovery rate I referenced, then present it. But spare me the lectures about my supposed lack of knowledge or the realities of the legal marketplace. It's quite presumptuous of you to dismiss my perspective as entirely outside the realm of reality just because it doesn't align with your anecdotal experiences. I never claimed that my experience was universal, but I also don't accept that it has no bearing on the discussion just because you say so. If you want to have a substantive debate about the applicability of the 80% recovery rate to different types of legal work, then bring some concrete evidence to the table. But if all you have to offer are personal attacks and unsubstantiated opinions, then don't be surprised when I have no interest in continuing this conversation. I'm not here for your unsolicited mentorship or life advice. I'm here to discuss the facts and data surrounding legal billing practices. If you can't engage with the topic on that level, then perhaps it's best we end this unproductive exchange.
    • Dinsdale
      Not sure I follow what you are saying here, but (1) Bay Street firms pay students $100,000/year because that is the going rate for the top achievers they wish to attract, and they see said students as a long-term investment that may pay off in 3-4 years' time.  There is no expectation to "make money" on them until that point; and (2) senior counsel don't dishonestly "take credit" for student work, they remove it from their invoices because the client has no tolerance to pay for it (see Diplock's post above) and quite often it is of limited utility to the client anyway.
    • Diplock
      The terrible thing about arguing with you is that you have a terrible attitude and you are genuinely clueless. So I end up with this instinct where I want to correct the cluelessness without engaging with the attitude, and it's just about impossible. But here I go. I don't care what the overall recovery rate of all legal billings happens to be. I have no idea where that number would be generated in some authoritative sense, but if you want to claim it's 80% I have no reason to argue with you. I'm not even going to get into my own practice area which is probably outside the framework of your assumptions along with vast swatches of the legal marketplace. I just want to engage with the central logical fallacy here. Your basic argument is that if 80% of all bills are paid then any bill a lawyer generates has an 80% chance of being paid. So lawyers should just hire more students, bill their existing clients at $100/hour for the student, and watch the money pour in while paying their students very well as 80% of those bills are collected. And that is, due respect, completely fucking insane. You genuinely don't know the legal marketplace. I mean, you just don't know. And if you wanted to learn, rather than bitch, there are people here who'd teach you. Except that I briefly forgot your entire presence here is really just an extension of feeling screwed by the legal profession you no longer want to enter, so I don't know why I'm surprised. Mainly, I'm posting for others at this point. Here's a basic snapshot of the reality. Almost all clients have a limited tolerance for legal billings. They have a budget. Sometimes that budget is very explicit - as in they are able to pay X for the matter they are involved with and no more. Virtually all Legal Aid work exists in this framework btw (and I won't even engage with how far off reality you are there) but even when the budget isn't explicit it's still real. Clients don't just pay whatever bills you lob at them. They do, in fact, have limits. And if this information is outside the reality you've assumed, you've got some basic remedial economics to study. You don't want to accept anecdotal information that students are not routinely billed at the rates you suggest, that their hours are heavily written down, etc. So fine, you don't want to accept people simply telling you that happens. So I'm giving you the analytical framework. You've basically just assumed that any bill has an 80% chance of being paid, so lawyers should charge clients these rates and the money will appear. I'm telling you, on an abstract level, clients with that kind of flexible tolerance for legal billings are extremely rare. Maybe if you happen to be working on an app for the government no one blinks when your bills inflate overnight. Everyone else does care. Most legal work exists completely outside the framework you imagine - nevermind that your ideas about event that framework are bunk. We aren't talking about clients who pay monthly bills in the five and six figures for ongoing legal support. We're talking about individual clients paying total legal bills in the $5k and $10k range. You can't just tack on a couple thousand dollars for student time spent researching and drafting and imagine throwing that amount on a bill will generate additional revenue. You just can't. And your insistence it should happen that way because 80% of all bills are recovered isn't going to bend reality in that direction, no matter how many times you type it into the Internet. Hope that helps with your knowledge base. The attitude, I leave to you.
    • myth000
      You are assuming honest billing where student work is actually billed as student work rather than a senior counsel taking credit for it. If that is the practice in your firm, and if your firm also pays the student $100,000, then I can see how a student does not make money for the firm.
    • Dinsdale
      The average recovery rate on bills issued to clients is very likely over 80%, sure (actually much higher than that at any successful practice) but you are again missing the fact that lots (and I mean lots) of student time never gets billed in the first place, as the partner knows perfectly well that the client doesn't want to pay for some kid to learn the law.
    • myth000
      The statistical fact is that the average recovery rate is above 80%, so logically, the only reason you would think it was different is if that has not been your personal experience. I have no interest in disparaging your practice; I am just inferring the reason why you might believe the recovery rate is low. As I said in my first comment, I want to see hard facts that prove the generalization that students don't make money for the firm.
  • Recent Topics

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By accessing this website, you agree to abide by our Terms of Use. YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU WILL NOT CONSTRUE ANY POST ON THIS WEBSITE AS PROVIDING LEGAL ADVICE EVEN IF SUCH POST IS MADE BY A PERSON CLAIMING TO BE A LAWYER. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.