Nobody teaches billing in law school, and yet an attorney’s billed time is how the work becomes a livelihood. This is the manual most lawyers never get: how attorney billing works, how to record time so it gets paid, what block billing is and why to never do it, and the habits that separate attorneys whose bills sail through review from those whose prebills come back covered in red.
How Do Attorneys Bill?
Attorneys bill through the fee arrangement in the engagement agreement: hourly (the default for litigation and unpredictable work), flat fee (defined-scope matters), contingency (a share of recovery), or hybrids. Under hourly billing, the attorney’s recorded time flows into the firm’s billing cycle: entries accumulate on the matter, a draft statement (the prebill) is generated for review, the billing attorney edits and approves it, and the final invoice goes to the client, often with online payment. The attorney’s job in that pipeline is the raw material: complete, accurate, well-described time entries, recorded when the work happens.
How Do Attorneys Bill Their Time?
In increments, against matters, with descriptions. The mechanics every practitioner should have on autopilot:
- Increments. Almost all firms bill in tenths of an hour (six minutes); a few use quarters. Everything rounds up to the increment: a two-minute email is 0.1. You may round to the increment; you may never bill time you didn’t work.
- One task, one entry. Each entry gets its own time value and its own description. This is the habit that prevents block billing before it starts.
- Descriptions a client can picture. “Attention to file” gets cut in review; “Review medical records from Dr. Harmon regarding causation opinion, 0.8” gets paid. Name the document, the party, the purpose.
- Record as you work. Time reconstructed on Friday is time lost and time wrong. Run a timer, or enter each task as you finish it, from your desk or your phone between hearings.
- Know the client’s billing guidelines. Corporate and insurance clients publish rules: task codes, entry caps, non-billable categories. Billing against the guidelines is faster than appealing rejections after.
What Is Block Billing by Attorneys?
Block billing is stacking several tasks into a single entry: “Research, draft motion, client call: 6.0 hours.” It reads as efficient and reviews as evasive. Clients can’t tell what anything costs, e-billing systems flag it, and courts routinely slash block-billed hours in fee awards precisely because they can’t verify the components. If a fee petition is ever in your future, block billing is a discount you’re pre-agreeing to.
“A block-billed entry asks the client to trust the total. Itemized entries let the bill prove itself.”
– Orion
The cure costs nothing: separate entries as you work (a timer per task makes it automatic), and check your own prebill for blocks before the billing partner does.
How to Bill as an Attorney: The Habits That Compound
- Capture everything, decide later. Record all your time, including work you suspect will be written down. The write-down decision belongs at prebill review, with full information, not in your head at the moment of entry.
- Enter time daily. The gap between work and entry is where billable hours evaporate. Daily entry is the single highest-return habit in professional billing.
- Respect the prebill. Review your draft entries promptly when the billing cycle runs: fix descriptions, flag courtesy discounts explicitly, and return them fast. Slow prebill review delays every invoice behind it. Electronic prebill routing exists to make this a same-day task instead of a stack of paper on a credenza.
- Keep trust and billing straight. Know whether the matter has a retainer, bill against it correctly, and never treat unearned funds as income.
- Watch your own numbers. Hours billed, realization (what survives review), and collections (what actually arrives). A high-hours attorney with low realization has a description problem, a guidelines problem, or a block-billing problem, and all three are fixable.
Billing Discipline, Systematized
Orion’s Financial Management and ePrebill Manager turn these habits into workflow: fast time entry from desktop or iOrion mobile, electronic prebill review and markup, client guideline compliance, trust integration, and ePay online payments. See it at orionlaw.com or request a demo.