Whats a “billable hour?
Most lawyers work on a billable hour system. A “billable hour” is an hour that can be charged to a client. So if I work one hour on a file for the XYZ Company, that would be one billable hour. The opposite of a billable hour is, of course, a non-billable hour. That’s an hour that an attorney works but that isn’t billed to a client. Ideally, every hour that a lawyer works should be a billable hour. In practice, however, there’s always work that needs to be done that can’t be billed to a specific client. Of course, some creative lawyers will manage to “double bill” — billing two clients for the same hour worked. That practice, however, is unethical. Not uncommon, just unethical.
