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The Client Revolution isn't just limited to the United States. Lawyers in Canada and the UK are also bridling at the Woodrow Wilson–era business model of timesheets and billable hours. In Australia, there's been a flurry of antitimesheet talk and activity. See Ron Baker's post "Timesheets on the defense Down Under" over at VeraSage Institute for a nice summary, highlighting colleague John Chisholm's great work in the area.
Australia's national legal newspaper, Lawyers Weekly, had a fine special report on the topic, "Once upon a billable hour," by the paper's editor, Angela Priestley.
I spoke with Angela last week. She was interviewing me in advance of my visit next month to Sydney, where I will be presenting at the Australian Law Practice Management Association's annual conference. Angela did a nice job framing the issues and summing up the message that I plan to bring to Oz next month. She paid particular attention to the problem of timesheets, and rightly so. She writes:
Shepherd believes that all areas of law can function without timesheets — even litigation, which he says takes up 75 per cent of his work — and he's adamant that if a firm moves to fixed-price billing it must also remove timesheets to ensure the removal of the billable hour is truly engrained, even if such a firm only uses timesheets for internal purposes.
"Many firms say, 'we'll try fixed prices, but we're going to keep timesheets.' That's a cop out, they are missing the point there," says Shepherd.
That point is that lawyers operate differently when not tied to billable hours. Shepherd believes that by removing timesheets, lawyers can truly concentrate on delivering the best outcome for clients and that in his firm, the moves has contributed to a direct increase in revenue.
"I really don't want my lawyers to be thinking about time," he says. "It's not just an invoicing method, it's a way of thinking about the work that we do. You don't practice the same way when you're not worried about hours. You do things differently, you make different choices."
It's an idea that's fast making its way around the world. Read the rest of Angela's piece here.
Thoughts? Have you heard of lawyers ditching timesheets in other parts of the world? Share in the comments below.