Policies On Billing For Attorney Travel Time – Above the Law

Most litigators have to journey for court docket conferences, depositions, web site inspections, and different occasions through the lifetime of a lawsuit. Relying on the kind of look, a lawyer may spend extra time touring to attend an occasion than on the look itself. Whereas many legal professionals invoice for journey time in some vogue, I’ve encountered vastly totally different insurance policies surrounding how a lot an legal professional ought to invoice shoppers for the time spent touring to and from appearances.

Full Billing

I labored at just a few totally different corporations that billed shoppers for the entire time a lawyer spent touring to and from an look. Managers at these retailers advised associates to start out billing from the second they left their residence to the second they arrived on the workplace after the looks was over. One of many insurance coverage protection retailers at which I labored explicitly reasoned that we have been allowed to invoice for all of this journey time since we have been charging decrease charges to the shoppers and full billing for journey time helped to compensate for this low cost.

In some circumstances, billing each minute of journey time had some uncommon penalties. In sure situations through which we wanted to look in a distant metropolis for a brief convention, we’d invoice a day’s value of time for an look that solely took quarter-hour. Nonetheless, some shoppers would quite have their typical lawyer deal with a matter and pay for all of a lawyer’s journey time quite than rent native counsel.

Half Billing

I as soon as labored at a regulation agency through which we may solely invoice half of our journey time for a given consumer.  Apparently, this was the settlement reached between the consumer and the regulation agency, and I assume this was a compromise to accommodate the understanding that journey time is totally different than different time spent by a lawyer. The attorneys on the agency and myself weren’t too impacted that we have been solely capable of invoice half of our journey time to this consumer since this often meant we may nonetheless invoice loads of time to the consumer. Nonetheless, it was a little bit annoying to enter the complete quantity in our time entry system after which make half of it nonbillable in order that we may adjust to the consumer’s needs and nonetheless monitor our time.

50-Mile Rule

I as soon as labored for a consumer who agreed with our regulation agency that solely journey time linked to an look 50 miles from our workplace can be billed. If we wanted to look someplace over 50 miles from our workplace, the entire journey time was billable, but when we appeared someplace lower than 50 miles from our workplace, none of our journey time was billable. Not one of the associates preferred this coverage. It appeared unfair that some appearances may yield a windfall of billable hours whereas different extra native appearances wouldn’t contain any billed journey time. I’m not positive how the regulation agency and the consumer got here up with this rule, nevertheless it looks like the consumer didn’t wish to pay for extra native, and maybe extra routine, journey by its counsel.

Time From The Workplace

Whereas some shoppers pay legal professionals for his or her journey time from the second they depart residence, different shoppers ask legal professionals to solely invoice for journey time it will take to get to an look from a lawyer’s workplace. To some extent, this is sensible.  Legal professionals sometimes arrive at their workplace throughout their typical workday and with out billing a consumer. If it takes longer for a lawyer to get to an look from their residence than from their workplace, a consumer shouldn’t be penalized for the additional time. As a useful matter, it was at all times difficult to determine how lengthy it will take for a lawyer to journey to an look from their workplace quite than from their residence if coming instantly from their residence, however often a tough estimate was agreeable.

In any case, legal professionals must be cautious to comply with all moral guidelines surrounding journey time and ensure they agree with shoppers about how journey time needs to be billed. As long as all stakeholders are in settlement, legal professionals can suggest quite a lot of compromises to cope with the problem of billing for journey time.

Jordan Rothman is a associate of The Rothman Regulation Agency, a full-service New York and New Jersey regulation agency. He’s additionally the founding father of Pupil Debt Diaries, an internet site discussing how he paid off his pupil loans. You may attain Jordan via electronic mail at jordan@rothman.regulation.