Billable hours at Canadian law firms: targets and reality

Almost every associate in Canadian private practice works to a billable hour target. The number in your offer letter looks manageable on paper, but it measures only the time you can charge to clients, not the time you spend at work. Here is what targets usually are, how many hours they take in practice, how to record your time properly, and how hours feed into your bonus and your next move.

What a billable target means

A billable target is the number of hours a year the firm expects you to record against client files. Time spent on internal meetings, training, business development, and administration is non-billable, even when it is required. Firms track time in six-minute units, or tenths of an hour (The Logic).

Before you accept an offer, ask three things: the target itself, whether it is measured on hours you record or hours the client is actually billed, and which non-billable work (pro bono, mentoring, writing, firm committees) counts toward it. Precedent reported that some firms credit mentorship and professional development against the target, but not all do (Precedent).

Typical targets by firm type

Some newer firms have turned the model around. Precedent described a Toronto construction law firm that set 1,750 hours as a maximum rather than a target, paying below-market base salaries and sharing year-end profit as bonuses (Precedent).

How many hours you actually work

The gap between billable and actual hours is the part offer letters leave out. The national study of Canadian legal professionals run by the Université de Sherbrooke with the Federation of Law Societies surveyed about 7,300 people. It found that billable hours were 67.9 percent of the hours actually worked by those with targets, and that they worked about 54 hours a week, against roughly 47 to 48 hours for those without targets (Phase I executive summary; Federation of Law Societies).

Applied to common targets, that ratio gives a rough sense of the week behind the number. This table is our own arithmetic, assuming 46 working weeks a year (about six weeks of vacation and holidays, as one lawyer on the Canadian Law Forum suggests is realistic) and that two-thirds of your time is billable (Canadian Law Forum).

Lawyers on the forum say averages hide the swings: a month of 45 to 50 hour weeks can be followed by months near 75 hours when a deal or trial is live (Canadian Law Forum).

Your first year

New calls take longer on most tasks, and work takes time to build up. A lawyer on the forum suggests about six billable hours in a nine-to-five day is reasonable for a new call, and that a nine-hour day may only produce six and a half to seven (Canadian Law Forum). Ask your firm whether the first-year target is prorated from your call date, and whether partners write down time for learning before it reaches the client.

Do not pad entries to catch up. The same thread warns against making work to hit a number (Canadian Law Forum). If you are short on hours, tell the partners you work with and ask for files. Our first-year associate guide covers taking in work, feedback, and saying no.

Docketing well

Your time entries become the client's bill, so they are governed by your professional rules. The Model Code says a lawyer must not charge a fee unless it is fair and reasonable and disclosed in a timely way, and lists the time and effort required and spent as one factor in judging that (Law Society of British Columbia; Canadian Bar Association).

• Record time as you go. Nova Scotia's Law Office Management Committee, quoted by the CBA, advises recording time promptly and says contemporaneous records weigh heavily when a fee is disputed (Canadian Bar Association).
• Describe the work. Say what you did and on what, in words a client can understand, without private abbreviations (Canadian Bar Association).
• Record everything, then let the partner decide. Enter all the time you spent. Writing down time is the billing partner's decision, and hidden time makes it hard to see how long work really takes.
• Check before month end. Firms chase unrecorded time at month end. Reviewing your entries weekly avoids reconstructing days from memory.

Hours, bonuses, and your health

At many firms, hours over target drive the bonus, and at others they are one factor in a discretionary review. Our guide to Bay Street associate bonuses covers both structures and what to ask.

Targets also carry a cost. In the national study, 85.8 percent of professionals with targets over 1,800 hours said they felt pressure to meet them, and pressure from targets was associated with higher psychological distress, burnout, and intention to leave (Phase I executive summary). Reporting on the study's recommendations, CBA National said they included reviewing the billable hour system and removing targets for lawyers in their first two years of practice (CBA National).

Using hours in a lateral move

If the target is the reason you want to move, compare hours as carefully as pay. A higher salary at a firm with a 1,900-hour target can be worth less per hour than a lower one at 1,500. Our guide to Bay Street firm types explains how full-service firms, mid-size firms, and boutiques differ, and lateral moves between Canadian law firms covers timing a move around your bonus.

When you are ready, update your lawyer resume with the matters behind your hours.