By Murray Gottheil | January 25, 2024
I spoke to two law firm partners this week: both told me that they were expected to put in 2,400 hours, consisting of 2,000 billable hours and 400 non-billable hours (administration, firm events, continuing education, business promotion, and mentoring) annually.
I did some math to determine how many hours these people have left to spend on their mental and physical health and personal relationships. The law firms are all advertising their mental health initiatives, so I knew that it would be substantial!
There are, according to Doctor Google, 240 workdays a year in Ontario. Multiplying by 24 gives you 5,760 hours during those workdays. Subtract 2,400 hours for work and 8 hours nightly, which is 1,920 hours annually for sleep. That leaves 3,360 hours to enjoy yourself.
The good news is you can still have fun for a whole 1,440 hours!
But wait. The 2,000 hours that these partners have to work are billable hours, and we all know that you cannot bill for every single minute during your working day. Occasionally, you must go to the bathroom, or take a personal phone call, or go to the doctor, or eat lunch, or converse with a colleague. And some tasks are just not billable. A very conservative estimate is that most people lose about 2 hours daily to such trivial pursuits. So, multiply twice 240 to get 480, which brings your fun hours down to 960.
And then, some of us like to shower every day or put on make-up, or get dressed, or drink coffee or eat breakfast, so let’s allow another 1.5 hours per day for all of that (240 x 1.5 = 360). Our 960 personal hours are now reduced to 600.
If we divide our 600 personal hours by our 240 working days, we get 2.5 hours a day. Surely that is enough time to commute to work for those who are not fortunate enough to work from home exclusively, eat dinner, go to the gym, spend time with our life partner and our children, and relax and enjoy our evening.
No, it is not. It is bloody impossible to work like that and be physically and mentally healthy and nurture your personal relationships.
(Let’s not even consider those who would like more than two weeks of vacation a year, or who commute a substantial distance, or who lose more than 2 hours of billable time during their day, or who want to attend an event at their children’s school. And let’s not think about the pressure at some firms to exceed the billable hours target if you really want to climb the ladder.)
The fallacy in all of this is obvious. It assumes that these partners are not working on weekends and holidays. Of course they are. It is baked into the system.
Once again, when law firms move the mental health file from marketing to operations, I will begin to believe that they give a damn about the health of their lawyers.
Murray is a happily retired lawyer who lives in the country, drives a pick-up truck, writes, teaches and mentors. You can reach him at [email protected] or see what he is up to at lawanddisorderinc.com.
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