The No Billables Experiment: One Year Later

Last fall, we posted about an Atlanta law firm, Ford & Harrison, which dropped billable hour requirements for first-year associates.  So how is the experiment working one year later?  According to this National Law Journal article, the experiment is a big success with the firm's attorneys and, most importantly, with the firm's clients.  The clients are pleased to have junior attorneys working on their matters now that they are no longer paying for the new attorneys' training:

Clients don't want to see on their bill junior associates they don't know, so when we are billing for hours there is a real disincentive to having the partner bring an associate," Holman said. "With the clinical hours, the partners can tell the client not to worry about the bill. It is an effective client development tool.

The partners like the new system, too.  Partners report that associates are gaining the skills they need faster than they would if they were worried about billables:

Holman said the firm has been surprised at how fast first-year associates begin to produce work that is billable once they are no longer under pressure to do so. She called the 1,900 billable-hour requirement "an unreasonable expectation" for first-year associates.

And the associates?  They're happy, too.  One of the first-year associates quoted in the story notes that "a lot of my friends at other big firms do document review all day and into the night. I am already on cases, and they are not going to have a chance to do that for a couple of years." 

Will other mid-sized firms follow suit?  Stay tuned -- if we see any Bay Area firms eliminating first-year billable hour requirements, we'll be sure to report it here.