Time Is Money

As I go around meeting with people I am becoming aware of how ingrained my habit of keeping track of time has become. I don't think I realized how pervasive the habit of tracking ones minutes had become, and how it affected my social interactions. When you're a lawyer, time is money, right? And so every coffee or lunch break you take to catch up with a friend is time you're not billing. If you're a lawyer and the person you're meeting isn't, you still notice this. You're giving up precious time to meet with them. Maybe they don't quite appreciate it but if the lunch lingers on a little too long, well, geez, you've really got to get going. Don't they understand that this time has a price? Maybe it's free for them, but it's not for you. Conversely, if you're having lunch with another lawyer, someone more senior than you, whose time is worth lots more (or at least, whose billable rate makes their time more expensive), you feel a sort of strange gratitude. You expect them to get through the lunch and then briskly bring things to a close and get back to the office. If they linger or suggest coffee, well, wow, that's so generous, what a good guy this is.

I have a huge awareness and guilt about being even a few minutes late to meet another lawyer. I don't like being late to meet anyone, (although I am, alas, more than I wish), but when I was billing time I noticed a slight resentment when I had to wait around for someone. Interestingly, I think I resented it more when a non-lawyer was late to meet me (they just don't understand what it means to bill by the hour!) than when a lawyer was late (oh, the pressures of being a lawyer, something must have come up). When I was late to meet another biller I felt like my inconsiderateness was easily translatable into economic harm, and would wonder as I apologized whether they'd passed the time calculating how many dollars my delay had cost their firm.

Non-lawyers don't seem to do this. Sometimes people are rushed and sometimes they aren't, but whether or not somebody's rushed doesn't have anything to do with their status or what their time is "worth". Nobody's particularly keeping track. Isn't that interesting?

Comments

[b]

between my NYC lawyer and I we charge 560 an hour or 15cnts a second

Hello how are ya is 30 cents
how's the weather is 60 cents
how is your family 2 bucks

Talking about fishing and sailing while it is 100 degrees in NY, traffic is at a standstill
you wife wants you home in time to pack the kids off to camp! Priceless

Or is it? Hmmm can I back charge him for taking his mind off the stree of every day life for 5 minutes?

I wonder?

Ps it took me 3 bucks worth of life to write this.

[SF Librarian]

Your post brought back memories of my previous billable life, where everything was divided into 6-minute increments. It really does pervade your life, and now that I don't practice law anymore, I can see that it turned me into a pretty uptight person. I can still remember how annoyed I would be at my non-lawyer friends when they were late for lunch or just didn't fit themselves neatly into my little billable world. I found that all of these feelings of impatience and hypersensitivity to time fade eventually if you move on to work (legal or otherwise) that doesn't require that you constantly watch the clock.

[Kathy]

I beg to differ. I am not an attorney and I don't bill by the hour. BUT, I am keenly aware of the casualness with which people waste my time. When people are late or see no problem in taking a cell phone call during a lunch - while I sit and wait for them to finish - it screams at me that they value their time more highly than mine. In some instances, that's valid. When it's not, it sticks in my craw. And it's a definite measure for me in evaluating whether I want to work with someone or even socialize with them.

You don't have to be a lawyer to grit your teeth when people are casual with your time.

[monica]

you also don't have to be a non-lawyer so uptight about your time. maybe thinking negatively about everyone is fun for you, but i would much rather just relax, budget some more time to them, and forgive your late friends.

[UCL]

I'm a private, billing attorney and I don't really think about billables in social situations, even when the many nonlawyer friends I have lunch with every week run late (which happens often). Billables are only on my mind when I'm at my desk or in court/depositions while actually billing.