Chief among these is that it puts pressure on law firms-and by extension their paralegals-to have as many billable hours as possible. The system of charging by the billable hour comes with complications. The understanding is that they’re built into the market charge rate instead.
Specifically, billable hours have to entail legal work that’s effectively using the education and experience you’re charging for.Ĭlerical and secretarial hours may not count toward billable work, regardless of who performs these tasks.1 For instance, if a paralegal organizes files, preps documents, or types a basic email, these tasks cannot be billed for, even though they’re part of running a law office. Jenkins ruling also described what can and cannot be considered billable hours. Experience performing this type and level of legal work.Ultimately, there are several components that go into determining the market rate for a paralegal including the paralegal’s: Frequently, however, your local paralegal association will have numbers that may be even more directly relevant to your firm. National organizations, such as the National Association of Legal Assistants (NALA), periodically conduct surveys on paralegal market rates, including by law firm size and geographical region. Determining the market rateĭetermining the market rate may seem an inexact science, but there are several resources you can turn to. After all, to support your charges to a client, you need to be able to show you’re charging a reasonable market rate.
Tracking billable hours for paralegals has become a standard part of law firm culture, but it still leaves the law firm with the question of what to charge. Jenkins established that law firms can bill clients for paralegal hours in accordance with the market rate, not what the paralegal is actually paid by the firm. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruling on Missouri v.
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