Why build relationships when you could just complete more tasks

Today Laura told me not to become a lawyer for the twentieth time because you don’t have a life and I’m beginning to believe her more each time she says it. Laura had to cut her vacation short because of a matter that had to be handled immediately in court, so she was driving down from Maine to Boston while speaking with an associate, of counsel, and me to give us tasks and come up with a plan of action. This moment is like many others in the office, in which the lawyers divide and conquer to manage a crisis and ensure that they are doing everything within their power to win the case. Although relationships do matter between attorneys and clients, I believe that attorneys are almost exclusively judged on their ability to complete tasks and win cases. Making sure you have a good relationship with the client is important to getting all the necessary information to best represent them, but that is the extent of relationships within Donovan Hatem.

The task-oriented work style comes from how the leaders evaluate the less senior partners and associates. The partners evaluate the associates’ abilities to complete tasks and are very critical of interactions with colleagues or clients that are superfluous. The concept of billable hours really enforces this stress on task-oriented goals and disregard for a strong relationship-oriented office. Associates and partners are required to meet a minimum number of billable hours each month and annually to maintain their position in the firm. Going beyond the minimum is expected and those that just meet it, don’t receive more cases or promotions. It’s fairly common for both associates and partners to go to the office on Saturdays and Sundays to complete work that doesn’t require client contact but is necessary upkeep for their cases.

Each attorney is responsible for keeping track of their billable hours by logging them into a computer application in 6-minute intervals. If this alone doesn’t keep the lawyers constantly aware of how they are spending their time I don’t know what would. Further, lawyers must be thoughtful in their motions and filings, but can’t spend time constantly revising and tweaking the wording so they often farm this work out to associates (or me!) to ensure that their work is double, and often triple, checked before it is sent out to opposing counsel or filed in court. Phone calls with clients or opposing counsel are also billable, and attorneys must walk a fine line between building thoughtful relationships with their client but keeping the conversations as short as possible because its bad form to overbill the client for such things. Some things are billable, but the partners will tell you that you can only bill for a certain amount of the time. For example, I was doing research on a land dispute and spent around 10 hours over a 4-day period trying to resolve the discrepancies, but when the partner I was helping asked how long I spent Laura advised me to bill for just 2 hours. The stress to complete tasks and bill out as much time as possible is at odds with the need not to overbill a client, so attorneys are forced to use their time as effectively as possible and fudge the numbers when necessary.