The billable hour and contract attorneys

Today’s New York Times has an article featuring Evan Chesler, presiding partner at Cravath, Swain & MooreLawyers, who chats … once again …. about getting rid of the billable hour.  The article also  discusses other pay arrangements (click here).  We covered these same comments by Chesler in an earlier posting this month (click here).

But it helps focus on BigLaw economics and budgets and their affect on the contract attorney market.  The legal media has flooded us with stories of how the recession has caused law firms to lay off associates, paralegals and support staff.  Just cruise the National Law Journal and its various related sites these last few weeks to see the numbers.  

And our own canvass of contacts at various law firms this week revealed this trend:  associates (starved for work) are doing work they normally would assign to paralegals and contract attorneys.  We spoke to a number of associates and paralegals who said “associates are short hours so to meet their billable benchmarks they are doing, among other things, document reviews”. 

The question is: are clients paying associate-level fees for lower level work?

Whether we see a collapse of the billable hour system remains to be seen.  As related in the New York Times article many attorneys may be talking a good game but secretly hoping that the economy will bounce back.  And the billable hour is entrenched at BigLaw.  It creates a pecking order among lawyers, identifying the best as the busiest and the most costly which will bring results to the law firm’s bottom line.

We suspect today’s article will generate on a lot of buzz and feedback on the various legal blogs.  We follow a good many (maybe 50+) and we’ll try to report back.  But if you see a blog of note, leave a comment below.