lol thats what I love about being a photographer...I get paid for travel ie: mileage, plus drive time on the road...since I travel my whole Province (I'm in Canada) it can be many hours sometimes up to 20hrs a week or more...take the hours driven and my mileage together and then add on any expense like food and I make more than my actual pay for the hours worked...I like it...if you see my main post you'll see that this whole article is something I loath for good reason...I feel you should be paid for the time you put in, be that travel, slow machines etc.

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yeah but you silly nucks think everyone should get paid for everything and everything should be free so.... yeah, eh?

:P

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haha, I don't think everything should be free...it's a bonus to be paid for travel and in my case an exception, cause the commutes are expensive and I use my own vehicle too, if I wasn't being paid for that I''d be a lot tougher to afford a vehicle and gas, repairs (I put over 1,200km a week on my car).

But if your tlaking about free healthcare damn right...lol. Police serivces, fire department are free in US right? Do you pay them when they show up to fight a fire or save a life etc?

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Associates, on average, are expected to bill a minimum of 2,000 hours per year. Not be at work for 2,000 hours - bill 2,000 hours per year. That prevents you from getting fired. It doesn't win you any favors if there are cutbacks.

In order to do this, one needs to know how the system works. Specifically, one needs to know what gets cut if there's an audit by the client and how to prevent that. If I call my client (or my client calls me), I can bill .1 for the phone call. If I leave it at that, come audit time, the .1 is probably going to get cut by the client because there's no way to prove the call existed. So when I make a call, I follow it up with a letter - dictated and then sent by email - confirming the call. The dictation takes about 1 minute, provides not only a record that the call existed, but also notes for any other attorney, and best of all, entitles me to add another .3 - .6 hours. I have now turned 5 minutes of time into between .5 and .7 billable hours.

I also make work for myself. If discovery is at a standstill for more than 3 months, I contact the client, get authorization for a motion, confirm the authorization in writing, and then prepare the motion. A motion requires reviewing the file, legal research, drafting, reviewing the opposition, drafting the reply, appearing for the hearing and any adjournments, following for the Order, and serving the Order with Notice of Entry. I have numerous "form" motions from over the years and keep up to date with the law. Again, I turn a little bit of work into a lot of billable hours.

How can I do my job and comment? I take breaks in my dictation and, if I've had a lot of appearances (like today) am already ahead on my hours for the day. By 5:30 pm, I had over 12 hours posted because of two conferences in the morning, which included the appearances at court, followed by the reports on the appearances, confirmatory emails to the adversary, and then I worked on 2 budget reports, a few status reports, and reported on my incoming mail.

I'm not a "suck-up"; I'm a profitable investment trying to make partner.

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