Paralegal billing timer series#

Paralegal realization is the percentage of recorded time that stays on the bill and is paid by the client versus the amount entered into the billing system.

Paralegal billing timer series#

We recently put out a free 3-Part Video Series for 3 Key Strategies to Increase Your Billable Hours that can get you started. Easier said than done, right?! Especially if you’re still working from home.

You have to increase your billable hours. If 2 of those 20 paralegals were laid off, that would (conceivably) redistribute their work to the remaining 18 paralegals and thereby increase their paralegal billable hours and utilization numbers. Assuming a 90% collection rate and an average hourly bill rate of $150 per hour – that’s a loss of $1,125,000 compared to what they had budgeted.ħ5% doesn’t sound like a bad number for a grade, but when you’re looking at paralegal utilization, you want yours to be at 100% or more. That’s 7,500 hours less than the law firm budgeted for their paralegals. If their utilization is 75%, it will look like this: 20 paralegals x 1125 hours = 22,500 hours. If their utilization is 100%, it will look like this: 20 paralegals x 1500 hours = 30,000 hours Imagine if a law firm budgets for 20 paralegals to bill 1,500 hours this year, and every one of them is at a 75% utilization rate. It looks like this:ġ200 hours (actual hours billed) divided into 1,500 (budgeted) billable hours = 80% utilization.

In other words, how much of your work time is being spent on billable work. Paralegal utilization is the percentage of your time that is entered into the timekeeping system as billable to a client file, compared to the amount of your time that the firm has budgeted for you to bill.