Choose Careers in Law with an Awareness of Billable Hour Requirements

Whether a member of the legal profession is subject to billable hour requirements can be a significant factor in whether that individual finds satisfaction and fulfillment in her professional life.  According to responses received by the ABA Commission on Billable Hours, many government lawyers, in-house lawyers at corporations, lawyers in academia, public interest lawyers, and lawyers who no longer practice law left the private practice of law because they no longer wanted to be subject to the system of billable hours.  Yet most lawyers in the U.S. bill by the hour.  As a general rule, approximately 75% of U.S. lawyers are in private practice with law firms or in solo practice; about 10% work in private industry; approximately 10% work in government; about 3% are judges; approximately 1% work in academia; and about 1% work in legal aid, as public defenders, or as public interest lawyers.  In my experience from interacting with lawyers and judges, there is generally a continuum of professional contentment that is largely tied both to the fact of, and the number of, billable hours required.  [See ABA Commission on Billable Hours Report, 2001-2002 at 53; Deborah Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession at 24 (2000).]