QNBT: Extracting Real Value from Non-Billable Time
“Your billable time is your income; your non-billable time is your future.”
David Maister
Non-billable time gets little respect
Many perceive non-billable time as something that can be conjured at will. Taking someone to dinner who may or may not be a qualified client prospect can be recorded as business development. Furthermore, that two-hour dinner can turn into three or four and, with travel time, five hours. Those who have spent many hours on gruelling and challenging legal work can easily resent the generation of these hours with so little effort.
The consequence: Non-billable time is often not tracked accurately
In fact, in many firms, it is seen as a sign of prestige not to record non-billable time.
Some firms have learned to break this cycle by making non-billable time less discretionary and harmonizing it with the objectives of the team or firm.
The nature of the “qualified non-billable hour” is pre-negotiated and pre-authorized.
Suppose a senior associate wants to join the ABA section relevant to her practice area. Furthermore, she’d like to attend the meetings of her subsection locally, regionally, and nationally. Her practice group leader wants to know why this will be a worthwhile investment for the firm and indeed what the return on investment might be. She argues that over the next several years, gaining prominence in the section will yield referrals from other parts of the country and thereby enhance the practice for her, her group and the firm.
Her practice group leader might wisely ask something like: “Do you think you can get on the ladder such that you will occupy a position of prominence in the section, perhaps leading to becoming a chair of the section within five years?” The senior associate may respond that she was successful in attaining elected offices in school and then university and is confident that she can do so in the section. The deal might be struck such that the approval to spend the non-billable time (and the travel expenses) will be conditionally approved based upon a monitoring of her progress over the course of the next two years. If that progress is promising, the firm will continue to support the effort.
In this instance, the non-billable time expended by the associate becomes qualified non-billable time (QNBT). It is not merely discretionary time, nor is it perceived to be something that can be conjured at will, but rather it is something that has been vetted and will be measured against a set of objectives.
Imagine a situation where most, if not all, of the lawyers create a plan – for approval – that will constitute QNBT. Aside from an improved perception and respect for the non-billable time that is being invested, there is also a much higher probability of a good return on that investment for the firm.
A heretical principle: The non-billable hour is worth more than the billable hour
A Chicago firm I know which has had a meteoric rise in prosperity decided that a non-billable hour was worth more than a billable hour. Before you faint, this did not mean that spending eight non-billable hours and no billable hours in a day was considered more valuable for the firm. Not at all. Rather, the firm decided that those who spend ten billable hours and no non-billable hours are depriving the firm of the strong return that it would obtain on having at least one quality non-billable hour from that individual in a day.
Desirable non-billable minimums and billable maximums
For those firms that still bill exclusively by the hour, it is tough to persuade leadership that excessive billable hours are counterproductive. The truth is that the more senior people with the relationships should be spending at least a portion of their time attracting more work from existing clients and attracting new clients. Those who do exclusively billable work deprive the firm of that new work generation. Therefore, some enlightened firms actually place a maximum on the billable hours that a partner can spend, especially if that partner is a part of senior leadership or practice group leadership or industry group leadership or have a proven rainmaking capability.
I strongly recommend that the managing partner and executive team give some serious consideration to becoming QNBT-oriented.