What happened here [an Irwin Mitchell senior associate getting caught misrepresenting billable hours, who was ultimately banned from the profession by U.K. regulators] is not as extraordinary as it may sound. The practice of inflating hours—at least to some extent—is widely accepted. After all, if you divide annual targets such as 2,000 or even 2,400 billable hours by the actual working days in a year, you quickly realize that this level of ‘billable productivity’ is hardly achievable—especially for lawyers who are not directly responsible for managing client relationships or leading matters.
—Lawyer and executive trainer Anna Elena Brolis told Law.com about the billing snafu garnering international attention. She continued, “From this perspective, the sanction in this case feels disproportionate: it does not punish the associate for the tolerated practice itself, but rather for having managed that tolerated practice poorly.”