One way to make your bills more palatable to clients

Billing clients may seem a bit off topic for this blog. Then again, there’s no denying that bills are important written communications from lawyers to clients. With that in mind, here’s a tip from Jim McElhaney on how to write a more effective bill: stop rounding time entries to the nearest tenth of an hour. As McElhaney explains, “7.82 hours at $436.79 an hour looks a lot harder to challenge than 7.5 hours at $400 an hour. As if somehow it’s exact, so it must have a rational basis.”

Another tip I learned long ago: Write time entries that reflect how the task benefits the client. Thus:

• Not so good: “Legal research. 4.5 hrs.”
• Improved: “Legal research to support planned motion for summary judgment. 4.5 hrs.”

Of course, if you can’t explain how the task benefits the client, you may want to question whether the task should be performed at all.