The Gazette 1984

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GAZETTE SEPTEMBER 1984
Chargeable Hours
Thefollowing article is by Mr. Eric Hiley, Solicitor, Senior
Assistant Secretary, Contentious Business Department,
The Law Society (of England and Wales). It first appeared
in The Law Society's Gazette of 18th April 1984 and it is
reproduced with the permission of the editor.
CHARGEABLE hours are defined as the hours a
solicitor or a fee earner in a solicitor's practice
works during the course of a normal working week in
respect of which it is reasonable and practicable to render
a bill to a client. The question of how many chargeable
hours one normally works is not an academic one. Those
who operate time recording systems will know from
experience that a great deal of a normal working week is
spent on non-chargeable time. This may be time spent on
office administration, further education, sickness, or
undertaking the many other tasks within the office for
which a bill cannot be rendered to a client.
It is normally accepted that allowing for statutory
holidays and a certain amount of other time away from
the office, there are about 220 working days in a year. A
seven-hour working day produces a possible 1,540 hours
in a year. A 7% hour day will produce 1,650 hours. How
much of that time is normally spent on work for which a
bill can be rendered to a client?
The reason why this question is important is that in
order to calculate an accurate hourly expense rate one
needs to divide the annual expense of a particular fee
earner by his annual chargeable hours. The information is
also essential to achieve proper billing forecasts in a
budget.
An important reason why the Special Committee of the
Council of the Law Society on Remuneration wishes to
obtain evidence of chargeable hours is because it plays a
substantial part in the apportionment of expense to
hourly criminal legal aid rates.
Those familiar with the subject will know that in the
case of R -v- Wilkinson [1980] 1 All ER 597, the
Remuneration Committee produced evidence from
Centre-File Ltd. to the effect that on the basis of records
kept for 125 firms the average annual chargeable hours
recorded by full-time fee earners (including partners) was
1,005 and for partners alone 970. These figures included
recorded overtime. In the same case the Remuneration
Committee also produced the evidence of the Law
Society's 1976 Remuneration Survey which showed that
the average chargeable hours of the very large firms which
kept time records by computer were for partners between
985 and 1,080, for assistant solicitors and legal advisers
between 1,044 and 1,100 and for articled clerks between
783 and 930. A survey carried out by the Holborn Law
Society in 1980 showed average chargeable hours for
senior partners of 947, junior partners 1,229, senior
assistant solicitors 1,064, junior assistant solicitors 1,085,
legal executives 1,081 and articled clerks 740. This
evidence has been considered unreliable by the Lord
Chancellor's Department because it is said to be based on
too small a sample. The Remuneration Committee
therefore commissioned a further survey in the second
half of 1983 in order to provide additional evidence.
Messrs. Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. were consulted
and it was decided to direct the survey to those firms
which were known to maintain computerised time
recording systems. 131 completed questionnaires were
returned and these gave information concerning the
chargeable hours of 3,345 fee earners. The following table
sets out the results of the survey in the case of full-time fee
earners and again the figures included recorded overtime.
Other non-
Convey- conten- Litigation
Grade ancing tious Civil Criminal •All
Senior Partner 993 1,051 1,106 1,219 1,046
Junior Partner 1,042 1,188 1,179 1,218 1,142
Senior Assistant
Solicitor 985 1,060 1,146 1,075 1,055
Junior Assistant
Solicitor 943 995 1,060 1,025 1,006
Articled Clerk 599 795 667 717 674
Legal Executive 980 883 989 1,078 959
Junior Clerk 672 664 751 845 699
Average of all
Fee earners 969 1,004 1,054 1,110 997
The following table gives the number of fee earners in
each category.
Other non-
Convey- conten- Litigation
Grade ancing tious Civil Criminal •All
Senior Partner 258 367 182 23 977
Junior Partner 118 126 124 16 429
Senior Assistant
Solicitor 155 108 124 15 432
Junior Assistant
Solicitor 108 118 157 8 449
Articled Clerk 20 47 32 4 278
Legal Executive 204 209 198 13 655
Junior Clerk 38 34 39 1 125
Average of all
Fee earners 901 1,009 856 80 3,345
•The 'All Classes' figures include 499 fee earners who could not be
categorised because their work was too mixed.
The results of this survey are a valuable addition to the
information which had already been obtained and the
survey does appear to confirm the figures obtained by
other surveys. The Law Society has for many years
asserted that the average number of chargeable hours
which a fee earner can reasonably be expected to record is
in the region of 1,000, although it is recognised that there
will be variations around this figure which are related
either to the type of work undertaken or the type of fee
earner undertaking the work. Such variations can be seen
in the tables printed above.
It is well known that the Lord Chancellor's Department
has used the assumption of 1,300 chargeable hours in
respect of criminal legal aid work. The present survey may
not go very far to change this supposition inasmuch as the
number of fee earners involved in criminal litigation in the
survey was not considerable. In spite of this, however, the
survey throws considerable doubt on the figure of 1,300
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