Legal Commentary

In The War Between Easy and Effective, Effective Should Win

By Patrick J. Lamb

I am really annoyed.  I just read a post at Above The Law, Under Attack, Should Billable Hour Be Concerned For Its Safety?  The post concludes with this observation:

It is easy to say that the billable hour doesn't reward efficiency. And clients can demand fixed rate solutions if they want to. But right now the most objective way to measure an associate's contribution to the firm is by looking at hours. Until somebody comes up with a better system that provides some measure of objectivity, the billable hour isn't going anywhere.

The stupidity of this statement is beyond my ability to quantify, but qualitatively, it's pretty damn stupid.  There are, after all, many objective standards employers could employ to judge an associate's performance.  Resting heart rate or breaths per minute.  Distance covered in a 1 minute run.  Shoe size.  Number of suits in his or her wardrobe.  Apartment size.  Critics will say that these things have nothing to do with performance.  I agree, but I say the same is true for number of hours worked.

I am a big advocate of looking at what real businesses do as a way of determining what law firms should consider.  I know of no business that looks at time spent working as a basis of evaluating the performance of a professional employee.  So why should lawyers be treated differently? The answer is because law firm partners have gotten lazy.  Instead of sitting down to meaningfully review the performance of each associate on a substantive basis, which could take hours, why not simply look at a data run?  Hey, that only took minutes.  Lawyers who abdicate their review responsibility do a gross disservice to their associates.  That's sad, but in view of how firms treat associates, predictable. 

Easy vs. effective.  Let's try to keep our eye on the ball.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on August 24, 2009 (boomark / email).