Bloated Billables
"One of the reasons attorneys turned to hourly billing is that they found they were making less money than doctors," said William G. Ross, a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala.

But the hours in question were few by contemporary standards. In 1965, the American Bar Association found that hours billed by American lawyers ranged between 1,200 and 1,600 annually, practically a part-time schedule today.

Larger firms now generally expect at least 2,000 to 2,200 billable hours from their associates, and billing 2,500 to 3,000 hours is not unusual. Earlier this month, associates at the New York office of Clifford Chance, the British law firm that is the world's largest, sent the partners an anguished memorandum. Its primary complaint was that the firm required 2,420 billable hours annually to qualify for a bonus. The requirement is, their memorandum said, "profoundly unrealistic," "dehumanizing" and "verging on an abdication of our professional responsibilities." It encourages, they said, "padding of hours, inefficient work, repetition of tasks and other problems."
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As a result, said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University, lawyers billing 2,000 must work 60 hours a week. "No one working these kinds of sweatshop hours can give good legal service," she said.
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Associate salaries, which start at around $125,000 for new associates at big firms in New York and easily top $200,000 for more senior associates, create few options for firms. Partners at such firms, whose hourly rates have been approaching $700, often make more than $1 million.

"The salary wars have only made things worse," said Susan Saab Fortney, a law professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. "Where is the money going to come from? It's going to come from the sweat of associates."

Lawyers may look for opportunities to make the simple complicated. "Why not leave no stone unturned if you are charging by the stone?" Professor Rhode asked.

In 1999, Professor Fortney of Texas Tech surveyed 1,000 associates in Texas law firms. Almost half agreed that billing pressure "causes ethical and competent attorneys to leave private law practice." Another third abstained from answering the question. "We're driving the wrong people out of private practice," Professor Fortney said. "We're driving out the ethical lawyers."