Billable Hours Chart: How Attorneys Make Billing Increments

76% of legal firms report financial transparency as a top client demand. As a legal professional, one of the best ways to meet this expectation is to consider how you bill clients for your time.

The best way to do that (okay, one of the best)? Using billable hours charts as a structured and consistent way to manage the billing process. If that sounds confusing or complex, don’t worry — we’ve included a template here to get you started.

Bonus: Accurate time tracking underpins client billing, so we’ll also explore how Toggl Track can streamline your legal practice and enhance profitability.

TL;DR—Key Takeaways

• A billable hours chart is a standardized template that helps lawyers accurately track, calculate, and invoice their time.
• Billable hours charts are most commonly broken into 10 x six-minute increments, known as tenths. Tenths balance efficiency and accuracy, providing transparency to clients without creating unnecessary administrative overhead.
• Alongside billable hours charts, it’s important to follow timekeeping best practices, including keeping a close eye on your split of billable vs. non-billable hours.
• Use legal time tracking software like Toggl Track to capture all your billable and non-billable hours and automatically create detailed and professional hourly rate invoices your clients will love!

What is a billable hours chart?

A billable hours chart is a standardized template that helps lawyers accurately track, calculate, and invoice their time.

By breaking work hours into distinct increments, billable hours charts help you convert time worked into clear and transparent pricing models.

In turn, these pricing models help law firms improve invoicing accuracy, creating greater transparency, credibility, and client trust.

Why do lawyers bill in six-minute increments, though?

Turning minutes and hours into cash isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes, you’ll work on fast ad-hoc tasks; other times, you’ll work on full-day assignments. So, you need a way to calculate billable hours consistently.

To help, it’s common practice for lawyers to break their hours into six-minute increments, also known as tenths. Put simply, this breaks every hour into 10 x six-minute increments that can be multiplied against your hourly rate to work out an accurate billable amount for your legal work.

Here’s how those tenths break down into six-minute increments.

1-6 minutes	10%
7-12 minutes	20%
13-18 minutes	30%
19-24 minutes	40%
25-30 minutes	50%
31-36 minutes	60%
37-42 minutes	70%
43-48 minutes	80%
49-52 minutes	90%
55-60 minutes	100%

Sample billable hours chart

To bring the process to life, here’s a billable hours increment chart template you can use.

Using billing charts is all about multiplying your hourly rate by the billing increment you’ve worked. So:

Hourly Rate x Increment = Amount of Invoice

For example, let’s say you’ve worked 34 minutes on a tenths-based increment scheme; that’s 60% of an hour. If your hourly rate is $300, that’s $300 x 60% = $180. So, you’d be invoicing $180.

Minutes Worked	Billable Hours
1-15 minutes	0.25
16-30 minutes	0.5
31-45 minutes	0.75
46-60 minutes	1.0

Best practices for using an attorney billable hours chart

While billable hours charts might seem simple, they can easily become clunky, time-consuming workflows. Follow these best practices to keep them relevant and useful:

• 📄 Pitch your billing fairly. When tracking billable hours, find the balance between detail and efficiency. Logging and billing every email you send is probably overkill. But clients might get suspicious if you charge for hours of emails at a time. Align your increments to your work schedules to reach a level of detail that’s right for your clients.
• 🙅 Don’t pad your hours. For those working on larger increments, such as sixths or quarters, there can be a tendency to pad hours, claiming you’ve done more work than you actually have to hit the increment. If your team is padding, it’s best practice to lower your increments to offer better value and boost productivity.
• 🎯 Don’t focus on billable hours targets. All businesses need to make money, but focusing too strongly on targets leads to poor client outcomes. Instead, rely on capturing the right number of billable hours each day as accurately and fairly as possible. Doing this builds trust with your clients, helping you generate repeat work to hit your targets.
• ⏱️ Invest in accurate, real-time time tracking. Using your watch and an Excel tracker isn’t going to cut it. Accurate, real-time tracking software automatically monitors each of your tasks, ensuring no billable work falls through the cracks. It also removes the need for manual time entries, helping you stay focused on your clients rather than the admin.

A quick word about billable vs. non-billable hours

Not all legal services are invoiced the same way. To bill clients accurately, you must know the difference between billable and non-billable tasks. Let’s look at some common examples of tasks that fall into each category.

• Billable hour tasks. Client matters, including legal research, document drafting, court appearances, negotiations, planning workshops, and mediation.
• Non-billable hour tasks. Internal matters, including practice meetings, personal development, client development, and office management.

Can time tracking software increase profitability?

Talking of profitability, the best way to turbocharge your end-to-end billing process is to invest in time-tracking software, such as Toggl Track. Here are some of the ways we help legal professionals like you spend less time on administrative tasks and more on profit-boosting client work.

• Adaptable functionality. Time tracking is a cinch with our automated start/stop timer and manual time entry options that build a complete billable hours’ timesheet in a list or calendar view.
• Automated workflows. Put your calculator back in the drawer because Toggl Track does all the math for you, automatically turning hours worked into professional, client-ready invoices.
• Detailed reporting. If you want to dive deeper into your performance, we’ve got detailed reporting on cash flow, time per client, billable vs. non-billable time, and much, much more.
• Sync up with other systems. Whether it’s account, project, or full-scale practice management software, Toggl Track has a range of integrations to keep your data and workflows perfectly synced across all your platforms.

Don’t believe us? Check out our recent article on the 6 Best Time Tracking Software for Lawyers to see how Toggl Track stacks up against the competition. 👀

Start tracking billable hours more accurately

Billable hours charts are a quick and easy way to turn hours worked into accurate invoicing while building trust and credibility with your client. Most organizations break their hours down into tenths, but a range of different billing increments are available, including sixths and quarters.

While billable hours charts are a great start, nothing will turbocharge your time management better than an automated, user-friendly time tracking tool such as Toggl Track. With automatic start/stop timers, smart integrations, and automated invoice calculations, we’re proud to be the helping hand for legal professionals across the globe.

To boost profitability and streamline your billing practices, why not sign up for a free Toggl Track account today? There’s literally no time to waste! 😉