Enhancing Associate Performance Through Structured Practice Planning

The process of practice planning involves organizing and prioritizing a lawyer's billable and non-billable time investments. Each plan takes into account the firm's needs and performance expectations, as well as the individual lawyer's ability to meet these expectations. Typically, a lawyer's first five years of practice are heavily influenced by law firm members, while afterward, it becomes a mix of firm opportunities and personal choices.

Practice plans represent an opportunity for law firms to set expectations using a balanced approach to career development. Rather than having a uniform set of expectations focused primarily on short-term contributions, law firms committed to practice planning can set different goals and billable targets for each timekeeper based on longer priorities and needs.  This proactive practice leads to a better-trained and more motivated professional staff.

Considerations

A practice plan is considered a strategic career view since it is based on a shared vision of success between a lawyer and the firm. Each practice plan considers the firm's needs and performance expectations, as well as the individual lawyer’s ability to meet such expectations and career aspirations. The goal is to align personal and firm goals.

Structure

The practice plan is structured to quantify the total amount of time necessary for a lawyer to progress or remain successful. We refer to this universe of time as a lawyer’s scheduled hours. A lawyer’s total scheduled hours are split between billable and non-billable hours, usually on a 12-month basis. Time is allocated, and priorities are defined, all in accordance with the firm’s policies, strategic plan, and attorney career development goals.

Listed below are non-billable factors carefully considered in practice planning.

NON-BILLABLE FACTORS CONSIDERED IN PRACTICE PLANNING

Billable time/timekeeper revenue generation	Time spent on legal matters
Marketing activities	Professional organizations, contact management, content development, relationship-building, networking, and other business generation activities
New practice area/service development	Acquisition of knowledge of a specific legal area
Skill Development	Research and training of specific legal, administrative and marketing skills
Community service activities	Pro bono work
Administrative contributions	Billing, expense management, firm management, etc.
Training others	Developing and supporting less experienced lawyers
Recruiting activities and support	Efforts to encourage strong candidates of interest to work at the law firm

Each of these factors should be considered individually when estimating the number of hours to invest and possible costs. If a factor requires material amounts of money and time, a detailed subset plan is recommended. For example, the plan summary below indicates an investment of $5,000 and 330 hours in marketing activities. It is fair to expect that firm management will require a detailed marketing plan to support that investment.       

Approach

Firms can approach practice planning in various ways as outlined below.

Uniform Approach

Firms that require s a minimum number of billable hours to contribute to revenues and profit will take a uniform approach to practice planning. Once billable hours are scheduled, an attorney can determine the amount of non-billable time that will accompany the legal hours.  The most important non-billable tasks (e.g., administrative tasks like time tracking or marketing tasks like client entertainment and conference attendance, etc.), are assigned next. Beyond these tasks, an attorney can account for additional non-legal hours to support the development of their practice, until the total number of hours the individual is willing to schedule is reached.

Download your free, editable Attorney Practice Plan Template to personalize or share.

The table below indicates a sample standard hour approach to practice planning by years of experience.

A uniform approach recognizes a lawyer’s differing priorities as they become more experienced. Firms with stable and well-defined practice areas may want to use a uniform approach. In a sense, these firms already know what is necessary for success, and the practice planning process is a tool to teach lawyers “the business.” 

Bespoke Approach

Taking a more customized or “bespoke” approach, an attorney may start the process with the planning of non-legal tasks. In this case, the attorney first considers the different activities that go into each non-billable factor to estimate the overall non-billable time. 

A customized approach allows lawyers to be more strategic in their career development.  It does require a structured process to ensure that non-billable time investments advance strategic goals and to confirm that necessary revenue-generating hours meet the firm’s financial needs.

If a firm has a minimum billable hour’s requirement, the two (non-legal and legal) are added together to calculate the total hours (scheduled) for the practice plan. When no minimum legal hour requirement exists, billable hours are the result of subtracting non-billable hours from total scheduled hours.

For example, the table below indicates a few different practice plans for attorneys of similar experience.

Bespoke planning processes work better for firms with a wide variety of practice areas and differing client needs. In these firms, creativity and the ability to adapt to ever-changing priorities are highly valued. Entrepreneurial firms built around people with different talents and skills will likely get better results with a custom planning process.

ALIGNING WITH COMPENSATION AND INCENTIVES

A well-developed practice plan supports the progression of a lawyer’s capabilities and career. Law firms that tie compensation and incentives to attorney practice plans and to the factors indicated in the table below can be assured that they are paying competitively for economic contributions and adequately assessing qualitative increases in attorney value.