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Law Firm Billable Hours Target Calculator

What an annual billable target means week by week and day by day, once holidays are taken out.

Your numbers

%

Result

Billable hours per working day 7.8
Working days per year 230
Billable hours per week 39.1
Hours in the office per day 12.6
Hours in the office per week 63.1
A 1800 hour target across 230 working days is 7.8 billable hours a day. At a 62 billable share that means 12.6 hours in the office daily, 63.1 a week.

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. Annual targets sound manageable and translate into long days. The second figure here is the honest one: a 2,000 hour target at a 62% billable share is over twelve hours in the office every working day, and that is before any illness or slow week is absorbed.

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Questions

About this calculator

Why does a 1,800 hour target need such long days?

Because not all time is billable. At 62% billable, 1,800 billed hours requires nearly 2,900 hours in the office, which is around eleven hours a day with no slack.

What happens if I fall behind?

The arithmetic is unforgiving because the denominator shrinks. Missing a target by a month's worth means the remaining months each need materially more, which is how targets become unsustainable.

The formula

daily billable = annual target / working days; hours in office = billable / billable share

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