Professional services
Attorney Utilization Calculator
Measures attorney utilisation, where high utilisation can still produce a thin result.
Result
Not all unbilled time is waste. Travel, restocking, training and warranty calls are necessary and will never be zero. The useful question is whether the share is drifting, not whether it reaches 100%.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Billable hours divided by paid hours, with the unbilled time costed. Utilisation in a practice is bounded well below full, because non-billable work is obligatory rather than optional: supervision, business development, administration and professional requirements all consume paid hours that cannot be billed to anyone.
What moves the number
- Non-billable obligations by seniority, which differ sharply.
- Administrative load, much of which is delegable.
- Business development time, which is investment rather than waste.
- Realisation, which determines whether billed hours earned anything.
Where this one goes wrong
Utilisation without realisation is a misleading measure, because an attorney billing a high share of their hours at a rate that gets written down has produced activity rather than revenue. Read the two together. The second distinction is between unbilled time that is waste and unbilled time that is investment: business development and supervision produce future and leveraged revenue respectively, while administrative work a paralegal could do is simply expensive.
Before you quote
- Read utilisation together with realisation.
- Separate business development from administrative time.
- Delegate administrative work before pushing utilisation higher.
Questions
About this calculator
Is high utilisation always good?
Not by itself. An attorney billing a high share of hours at a rate that gets written down has produced activity rather than revenue, so utilisation and realisation have to be read together. One without the other misleads in both directions.
Which non-billable time is worth protecting?
Business development and supervision, since one produces future revenue and the other makes leveraged work possible. Administrative tasks a paralegal or assistant could perform are the expensive kind, and they are also the easiest to remove.
What utilisation should an attorney target?
Well below full, because non-billable obligations are real rather than discretionary, and the realistic ceiling differs by seniority: a supervising partner cannot bill what an associate can. Comparing across levels on a single target misreads both.
The formula
utilisation = billed hours / paid hours
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How to use this calculator
- Paid hours per day. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5.2.
- Fee earners. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5.
- Rate charged per hour ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $250.
- Cost per paid hour ($). Wage plus burden.
- Working days per month. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 22.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to billable share of the day, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid hours per day | 8 |
| Hours that reach an invoice | 5.2 |
| Fee earners | 5 |
| Rate charged per hour | $250 |
| Cost per paid hour | $34 |
| Working days per month | 22 |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Billable share of the day main result | 65.0% |
| Unbilled hours per month | 308 |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | $77,000 |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | $10,472 |
65.0% of the paid day reaches an invoice. The rest is 308 hours a month, costing $10,472 in wages and carrying $77,000 of revenue that never happened.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only rate charged per hour, this is what happens to billable share of the day. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Rate charged per hour ($) | Billable share of the day |
|---|---|
| $125 | 65.0% |
| $188 | 65.0% |
| $250 example above | 65.0% |
| $375 | 65.0% |
| $500 | 65.0% |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Paid hours per day
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 5.2.
- Fee earners
- A number, between 0 and 500, starting at 5.
- Rate charged per hour ($)
- A money amount, starting at $250.
- Cost per paid hour ($)
- Wage plus burden.
- Working days per month
- A number, between 0 and 31, starting at 22.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Billable share of the day | The headline result. A percentage. |
| Unbilled hours per month | A number. |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | A money figure. |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | A money figure. |
Estimating is the easy part
The jobs you never hear about cost more than the ones you mis-measure. BDEVY builds the marketing, systems and automation that bring them in.