Professional services
Law Firm Attorney Billing Calculator
Works what an individual attorney bills and collects, where the three figures differ.
Result
Business arithmetic for running a practice, not legal advice. Fee agreements, contingency limits, trust accounting and fee splitting are governed by the rules of professional conduct in your jurisdiction, and several of them are strict. Check the applicable rules before any of this affects a client agreement. Rounding practice is an ethical matter, not merely a commercial one. Quarter-hour increments on many short entries can inflate a bill substantially, and several jurisdictions and many clients object to it or prohibit it in engagement terms. Whatever increment is used should be disclosed in the fee agreement and applied consistently.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Hours recorded at the attorney's rate gives standard value, with realisation and collection applied to show billed and collected amounts. Reported for an individual, the chain is more useful than any single figure, since an attorney recording plenty of hours that get written down and one recording fewer that collect fully look identical on a single measure.
What moves the number
- Hours recorded and billed.
- Realisation on the attorney's matters.
- Collection on the clients they originate.
- Rate against the market for their level.
Where this one goes wrong
Judge an attorney on collected value rather than on recorded hours, because recorded hours reward activity while collected value rewards work the client was willing to pay for, and those diverge. The second point is that collection depends partly on the clients the attorney originates, which is a different skill from doing the work, and separating the two gives a fairer and more useful picture than a single combined figure.
Before you quote
- Measure collected value, not recorded hours.
- Separate origination from performance of the work.
- Review realisation on each attorney's matters.
Questions
About this calculator
Should attorneys be judged on recorded hours?
On collected value, because recorded hours reward activity while collected value reflects work the client was willing to pay for. Two attorneys with very different hours can produce the same collected value, and the second figure is the one that matters.
What if collection is poor on an attorney's matters?
Check whether it is the clients they originate or the work they do, since those are different skills and different fixes. A strong lawyer bringing in clients who do not pay needs help with intake, not with the law.
Why track all three figures?
Because recorded, billed and collected tell different stories, and the gaps between them locate the problem. A single figure tells you the result without telling you whether the issue is hours, pricing, scope or payment.
The formula
each entry rounds up to the next increment; the difference across all entries is the rounding effect
Put this calculator on your site
Free to embed. Paste this where you want it to appear. It stays up to date automatically because it loads from BDEVY.
Please keep the attribution line. It is the only thing we ask in return.
How to use this calculator
- Time entries per day. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 14.
- Average actual minutes per entry. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 9.
- Billing increment. Enter your own figure; the page starts at Tenth of an hour (6 minutes).
- Hourly rate ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $285.
- Working days per year. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 230.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to billed per year, 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 |
|---|---|
| Time entries per day | 14 |
| Average actual minutes per entry | 9 |
| Billing increment | Tenth of an hour (6 minutes) |
| Hourly rate | $285 |
| Working days per year | 230 |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Billed per year main result | $183,540 |
| Actual hours worked | 483.0 |
| Hours billed after rounding | 644.0 |
| Added by rounding | $45,885 |
| Rounding uplift | 33.33% |
Rounding to 6 minute increments turns 483.0 actual hours into 644.0 billed, an uplift of 33.33% worth $45,885 a year.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only hourly rate, this is what happens to billed per year. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Hourly rate ($) | Billed per year |
|---|---|
| $143 | $92,092 |
| $214 | $137,816 |
| $285 example above | $183,540 |
| $428 | $275,632 |
| $570 | $367,080 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Time entries per day
- A number, between 0 and 200, starting at 14.
- Average actual minutes per entry
- A number, between 0 and 480, starting at 9.
- Billing increment
- Choose from Tenth of an hour (6 minutes), Quarter hour (15 minutes), Actual minutes.
- Hourly rate ($)
- A money amount, starting at $285.
- Working days per year
- A number, between 0 and 365, starting at 230.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Billed per year | The headline result. A money figure. |
| Actual hours worked | A decimal figure. |
| Hours billed after rounding | A decimal figure. |
| Added by rounding | A money figure. |
| Rounding uplift | A percentage. |
Keep going
Related calculators
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.