Summary: Not many attorneys are able to achieve the 3,000 billable hours mark each year but this one soared past the level, and he explains how he did it.
How many billable hours did you get last year? Are you on track to beat that number this year? Chances are you are not on track to beat a partner at Michigan-based Howard & Howard. The intellectual property attorney, Daniel Bliss, billed 3,600 hours last year.
Law.com put his hours into context: “That’s almost 70 billable hours a week for 52 weeks. That’s 10 billable hours a day if you work seven days. That’s nearly 12 billable hours a day if you decide to take off one day a week.”
According to recent data released, Bliss is one of dozens of lawyers across the country to put in over 3,000 hours in 2017. The Am Law 200/NLJ 500 survey asked law firms to report the total hours billed they lawyer who billed the most hours at their firm in 2017. Many law firms declined to participate in the survey.
Bliss was willing to talk about his hours. He works from the Royal Oak, Michigan office, and their Las Vegas office. He has a goal of putting in 300 hours a month by aiming for 10 hours a day. He also credits being able to accomplish these goals with having enough work. He focuses on patent prosecution, trademark work, and litigation. He utilizes every spare moment, even working on the airplane where he often is able to draft patent applications.
Bliss calls himself a workaholic who has been a high biller his entire career. He knows not everyone else is able to spend all their time at work and he does not expect them to.
Fellow partner and high biller Gerald McGlynn III states that Bliss is able to bill lots of hours because he likes what he does. “He just tears into it, and he’s happy to do it.”
McGlynn is fully aware of what it takes to be a high-biller. He took the prize as Howard & Howard’s highest biller in 2015 with 3,200 hours.
Do you think attorneys can maintain a healthy mental state working that many hours? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
To learn more about how some law firms feel about billing hours, read these articles:
- GlaxoSmithKline Says No to Billable Hours
- Jackson Lewis Doing Away with Billable Hours
- Holland & Knight Nixes Billable Hours Tracking in Public Policy & Regulation Group
Bliss Photo: howardandhoward.com
Clock Photo: pxhere.com