What do lawyers and prisoners have in common?  They share a fixation on time.  Both groups are expected to spend a certain amount of time — whether it be expressed as target billable hours or as sentencing guidelines.  However, there is a noteworthy distinction between the groups:  prisoners get time off for good behavior.

While this may be an unnecessarily dramatic way to think about our relationship with time, think about it we must.  For the last few decades, the billable hour has been the gold standard against we measure a lawyer’s work and worth.  The problem is that a fixation on time can get in the way of thinking creatively about how lawyers (and law firms) actually provide value to clients.  Increasing numbers of clients are unwilling to pay just to keep us around.  They pay us to achieve specific results.

As clients and lawyers think more creatively about alternative fee arrangements, we’re all going to have to reconsider our dependence on the gold standard of time.  Perhaps in the process lawyers will free themselves from the need to do time.

[Photo Credit:  Matti Mattila]