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Professional services

Law Practice Billing Rate Calculator

The hourly rate a solo or small practice has to charge, worked back from income and overhead.

Your numbers

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Rent, staff, insurance, research, software, bar dues.
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Result

Rate you need to charge $201.89
Billable hours per year 1,334.0
Gross billings needed $269,324
If every hour billed and collected $167.17
Lost to realization and collection $46,324
You need to charge $201.89 an hour across 1,334.0 billable hours. Ignoring realization and collection would suggest $167.17, which leaves $46,324 a year unaccounted for.

Business arithmetic for running a practice, not legal advice. Fee agreements, contingency limits, trust accounting and advertising are all governed by the rules of professional conduct where you practise, and several are strict. Check the applicable rules before any of this affects a client agreement or a marketing decision. The billable share is the input most often overstated. Client development, conflicts checking, continuing education, trust reconciliation and administration are all necessary and none of them bill.

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Questions

About this calculator

Why is the required rate higher than I expected?

Because three deductions compound: unbillable hours, time written down before invoicing, and invoices never collected. Each looks small and together they routinely add a third to the rate needed.

What if the market will not bear that rate?

Then the overhead, the billable share or the collection process has to change. A rate the market rejects is information about the cost base, not about the client.

The formula

rate = (income + overhead) / (billable hours x realization x collection)

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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.