I expect the Labor Day weekend will be getting an early start in the next couple of hours.

No big plans for the weekend – still taking things day by day as I try and get over this respiratory thing.  Probably won’t even make it to the Triton Invitational water polo tournament over at UCSD.  It might be fun to watch, but with only five teams the tournament itself is just a shadow of it’s former self.

Been doing some cleaning up of my pending projects this week.  Maybe pruning would be a better word there, or maybe purging. I love practicing law, but have made no secret here of my disdain for the business of law.  For a couple of projects lately it’s been seeming like I spend more time working on getting paid than I actually spend on the projects themselves.  Life’s too short to deal with that nonsense, even if it means a few less billables until some new projects materialize.

So on that note, I’m celebrating Labor Day for the next 84 hours or so, and while my shop might not be organized in any way, shape or form, I can celebrate the trips we’ve taken courtesy of Spinner’s organized labor entity (San Francisco, Palm Springs, San Jose, Irvine),  their efforts to give him a better work environment, and by extension, the union benefits that give us a better life together.

I learned a long time ago that the Business of Law isn’t that different from countless other professions.  Sure, I’ve got my little card from the Bar, but on another level my work isn’t that far removed from various other consultants and technical writers.  Various legal pundits have been on a kick lately about the death of the billable hour; we must find another way to bill that blah, blah, blah.  

Yeah, that’s about as far as I get in those articles, so it was refreshing to see a good piece on the pros of the billable hour today that mirrors my experience from Jhames (a designer).  Personally, flat fees have a time and a place, just like several other masochistic activities I can think of.  Running comes to mind, as does getting my blood drawn.  Billable hours at a negotiated rate are the best way of measuring value and services that’s fair to both parties.

That said, while I love to do the occasional pro bono work, take everything Jhames says about the time-wasting proclivities of clients on a flat fee and square it for clients who aren’t paying anything.  He hints at the problem near of the end of his post when he discusses clients who aren’t being charged enough: without fail it’s the pro bonos (and my clients from my Public Defender days) who stand me up for meetings and generally run me ragged holding their hands as though they were in kindergarten.   Hate to say that most people seem to need a financial incentive to show common courtesy, but some days it certainly seems to be true.

Today was one of those days where nothing appeared to get done, even if things were completed.  Three hours of coding and troubleshooting upgraded some of the tags enough that Howling Point does what I want it to under the new version of WordPress.  Documents were sent out for review and comments and signatures and the like.  A reasonable start was made on a backlog of filing that may have built up.  But on one of those days when the personalities can be as bad as any grouping of ancient, senior and senile partners, not much billing.  Work, but not the paid kind.  Unbillable Hours, not just a great blog that went missing a few years back, but a daily reality of independent contracting, also known as being a solo practitioner.

Unbillable hours was also one of the (many) reasons I left the Cubedwellers a few years ago.  Rather than being salaried I was paid commission based on billable hours, but a management change made the arrangement completely unprofitable and I left.  Two years later I’m getting calls from an attorney who seems to think I’d love to help (as a witness) expand on an investigation I did.  Don’t I want to sit and talk for hours about a file I worked almost three years ago?  Do I really want to testify about how my former employer handled evidence and documents and correspondence?  Uh, no.

Tomorrow might be just as unbillable if some people don’t get back to me, but a sanity swim will be be taken.  Probably should have worked one in today.  Need to let the black line and chlorine work their magic, no matter how many Advils it takes.