Figuring out the balance between managing a law practice with the administrative demands of the business of law can be a challenge for all attorneys. In October of 2017 Clio released its 2017 Legal Trends report which should make all attorneys reevaluate the way they are conducting the business of law.
The most eye-popping discovery was that, on average, attorneys are only spending 2.3 hours of an 8-hour day on billable tasks. This is a mere 29% of their time. Clio also found that for those legal professionals working longer than eight hours a day the percentage of time spent on billable tasks was even lower.
This brings up the obvious question of what is taking up those extra 6 hours? Clio found that office administration, billing, technology maintenance, and bill collections are all eating away attorneys’ time. On average, these tasks constitute 48% of a lawyer’s time.
Finally, and this comes as no surprise to anyone in the practice of law, attorneys spend one third their time on what Clio calls “business development” or getting new clients. These numbers indicate that generating new business is a major effort for most attorneys.
There are a lot of reasons why attorneys are spending more time than ever on administrative activities but the bottom line is that you are probably spending less time on what matters to make your practice profitable.
If you need any further evidence that the business of law is broken this is it: Attorneys are working longer and are more inefficient than ever, in terms of billable hours.
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