Time Is Money

Billable Hour

The unit most firms use to price legal work, recorded in tenths of an hour, six minutes each. Each time entry records the date, the timekeeper (the person who did the work), the matter, the time, and what was done. The engagement letter sets the rate and the rounding rule; under a rule that rounds each task up, a twelve-minute call is 0.2 and a thirteen-minute call is 0.3.

Contemporaneous Time Record

A record of time made as the work is done, by a running timer or an entry written when each task ends. Reconstructed time is rebuilt later from calendars, emails, and memory, and in Brake v. Murphy the Third District said a fee award resting on it needs “something more than wild guesses.” In Hensley v. Eckerhart, the Supreme Court approved a district court’s 30 percent cut to one lawyer’s hours for inexperience and failure to keep contemporaneous time records.

Block Billing

Recording several tasks under one time figure, such as 7.5 hours for a deposition, a client call, document review, and emails. Courts cut entries that hide how long each task took, though the Fourth District has said the practice is not unreasonable in itself when the tasks are intertwined and well described. Law departments and insurers that receive bills electronically may require a UTBMS task code on each entry, such as L330 for depositions, so a day’s work becomes one entry per task.

Lodestar

The method Florida courts use to set a court-awarded fee: the hours reasonably expended multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. The Supreme Court of Florida adopted it in Florida Patient’s Compensation Fund v. Rowe, telling fee applicants to present records detailing the work and warning that inadequate documentation may reduce the hours claimed. Section 57.104(1), Florida Statutes, directs the court to consider a paralegal’s time when it was nonclerical, meaningful legal support under a lawyer’s supervision, and clerical work is not compensable as attorney’s fees.

Utilization, Realization, and Collection

Utilization is the share of a timekeeper’s working hours spent on billable work. Realization is the share of that billable work that reaches an invoice, and collection is the share of invoiced fees the client pays. An hour written off before the bill goes out lowers realization, and a bill the client disputes can lower collection, which is why firms care how entries read.

Alternative Fees

Ways to price legal work other than by the hour: a flat fee for a defined task, a contingency fee taken from the recovery, or a monthly subscription for a set of services. Florida Bar Ethics Opinion 24-1 suggests flat or contingent fees to lawyers whose tools make them faster, so that the benefit of the efficiency goes to lawyer and client alike. Any fee must still be reasonable under Rule 4-1.5, whose comment asks a lawyer, where appropriate, to discuss alternative billing methods with the client.

Padding and Double Billing

Padding is recording more time than the work took; double billing is charging two clients for the same hours, such as one trip that served both. Rule 4-1.5(a)(2) treats a fee sought by intentional misrepresentation of its amount as clearly excessive, and ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 says an hourly lawyer may not charge for hours not spent. In Haines v. Sophia, the Fourth District called lawyers fiduciaries who may not inflate the time they record for a client.

Billing for AI-Assisted Work

How a firm bills for work a generative AI tool sped up. Florida Bar Ethics Opinion 24-1 says the efficiency must not produce falsely inflated claims of time, and it warns against charging a client for time spent developing minimal competence with the tool. Charging the client the tool’s actual cost requires telling the client first, preferably in writing; a subscription that cannot be traced to one client’s matter is overhead.

Part 1: Start Your Clock

Start this part the day the activity opens, because it runs for three days while you do the rest. A matter is the case or project a client pays for. For this part your matters come from your own life: choose at least three, such as each class you are taking, your job, and your household. Track your time with the free timer app in Resources, or with the time log template if you would rather write the times down yourself. Each time you begin a task, start the timer and name the task and its matter; each time you switch, stop it and start a new one. Record three days, not necessarily in a row, and make at least one of them a day of classes or work. Log commuting, meals, and errands too, under Nonbillable. When you forget to start the timer, fill in the gap as soon as you notice, mark the row R, and note what you rebuilt it from.

Part 2: Practice on a Firm Day

While your days run, practice on a firm’s. Open a fresh chat and run the Timekeeper Trainer, and when it asks about the firm, tell it about Temko Eden.

Temko & Eden, P.A. A three-lawyer firm on Beach Street in Daytona Beach. It still carries the names of its late founders. Dana Whitfield, the managing partner, handles civil litigation and real estate closings. Luis Ortega, a partner, handles family law and probate, and Kim Nguyen, an associate, handles personal injury. Marcy Cole is the legal assistant, Ron Pike is the bookkeeper and office manager, and you are the firm’s paralegal.

Record each task in tenths, with a description, as the Trainer narrates it, and do not ask it for the answers. When the day ends, paste your time sheet into the Billing Auditor in a new chat and revise every entry it flags. Check each increment against the Tenths sheet in the template, since a model can round wrong as confidently as it rounds right. The practice day stays out of your post.

Part 3: Turn Your Log into Entries

When your three days are done, copy your timer’s entries into the Time Log sheet, or finish the rows you wrote by hand. On the Entries sheet, write one entry per task, per matter, per day. Convert each to tenths with the Tenths sheet, and describe the work so a client could follow it and a judge could count it: what you did, to what, and why. Mark Y under Reconstructed for every entry built from a rebuilt row. The box beside the entries totals your hours and figures your utilization; compare yours with the industry figures in Resources. Then write a note of about 150 words: what your utilization says about your days, the entry hardest to describe honestly, and where you rebuilt time and from what.

Part 4: Audit Temko Eden’s Prebill

Temko Eden represents Coastal Keel Marine, Inc. in a breach of contract suit against Dunlin Dock & Seawall, LLC over a seawall, and it bills the case by the hour.

A note from Dana Whitfield. Ron has run the January prebill for Coastal Keel. Before it goes out, check every entry against what the file shows, mine included: the Matter Record sheet has the calendar, the phone and email logs, the research log, and the document history. If Coastal Keel wins, the contract’s fee clause puts these entries in front of a judge, so flag anything a judge would cut. Rewrite what the records support, and bring me a question for anything they don’t. Don’t change a number the records can’t back up.

A prebill is the draft invoice a billing lawyer reviews before it goes to the client, and this one follows the engagement terms printed at the top of the Prebill sheet. Test each of the 22 entries against the Matter Record: find the row that shows the work, compare the times, and read the description as the client and a judge would. Mark each entry in the Flag column, and say in the next column what the record shows. On the Rewrites sheet, rewrite the five entries you judge worst, taking every number from a record and writing one entry per task. Where the records cannot support a number, write your question for the timekeeper instead of a guess. Then run the Fee Hearing Objector on your five rewrites, and fix any that do not survive it.

Finally, write a paragraph of about 200 words on entry 19, the deposition summary. Say what Temko Eden may bill for it under Rule 4-1.5, Opinion 24-1, and the engagement terms, and whether the firm could charge Coastal Keel for the AI tool itself. Close with a fee arrangement, agreed in advance, that would let the firm and the client share the value of its speed. Read the fees section of Opinion 24-1 yourself, and use the Opinion Reader to check your reading against its text.

Part 5: Post Your Deliverables

Create one new discussion thread with two things. First, your time record: the time log template with its Time Log and Entries sheets filled in, and your note. Second, your prebill audit: the prebill workbook with your flags and rewrites, and your paragraph on the deposition summary.

Part 6: Share Chat Link

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Timekeeper Trainer

The Trainer gives you the time a task took but never the entry, so each increment and description on your sheet is your own work. Withholding the answer is what makes the role-play train you, and it is your work the Billing Auditor then checks.

Billing Auditor

Naming the readers who matter, clients and judges, tells the model how hard to grade, so its flags lean toward what a fee opponent would attack. A critic works best when you set the standard it grades against.

Fee Hearing Objector

Models lean toward approving what you show them, so casting this one as your courtroom opponent is red-teaming: it argues against your entries instead of blessing them. The limit to what you paste keeps each objection tied to the record.

Opinion Reader

Because the model must quote a sentence for every answer and works only from the text you paste, you can check its reading line by line. Letting it say the text is silent gives it a way out other than inventing a rule.