The Gazette 1984

SEPTEMBER 1984

GAZETTE

is to record all the time spent on a matter whenever it may have been done. You may want to have some method of recording that the work was done in unsocial hours, but you will want to differentiate between doing work over a weekend because a client specially required it and doing it because you spent part of the previous week sick in bed or on the golf course and had to catch up or simply because you are a workaholic. It is really only when you come to the charging that you might want to reflect that certain work was done at the instigation of the client outside normal office hours and it is only such work that I would say is one in 'overtime'. I am sure that there are other questions, but the important thing is that for your firm you work out your own answers and that there is a consistency of approach so that everyone within your firm records his or her time on the same basis. Time costing As I have indicated, time costing is the process which converts time which has been recorded against a particular matter into pounds and pence so that when we know we have spent, say 6'/ 4 hours on a court case or 14'/ 2 hours on a complicated matter we know that the cost of the court case is £206 and the cost of the complicated matter is £652. Again there are a number of ways of going about this — one way is set out in the Law Society booklet entitled The Expense of Time, but even here there are some variations. What you want to arrive at is an hourly cost rate in pounds for each fee earner in your office which if applied to the chargeable hours recorded over a year will produce an annual gross income equivalent to the cost of running your practice. The hourly cost rate may be so constructed that it will also cover the target income of the partners or a proportion of it. Whatever formula is used you have to work out on a realistic basis (1) what you estimate will be your expense in the coming year, i.e., your costs on books, cleaning, electricity, insurance, rates, rents, telephones, post, photocopying, etc., and salaries and (2) how many hours are worked by each fee earner in the year, or more importantly the number of hours spent working for clients (i.e., chargeable time). The realistic assessment of your expenditure is really the preparation of a careful budget taking into account expected increases in certain costs during the year ahead. If you have a good time recording system you will know the number of hours spent by each of your fee earners on work for clients, but if you do not yet have this, as a guide 1,000 hours a partner and 1,100 hours for a qualified assistant might be adopted — but a partner heavily involved in office administration will probably not be able to produce 1,000 chargeable hours. Let us look at a three-partner firm with two qualified assistants, three unqualified assistants and one trainee and say that the budget expenditure for 1984/85 is £ 180,000 including fee earners' salaries of £38,000 but not any payment to partners. There is some argument how you should deal with partners' income in the formula. Some people say that as we are doing a costing exercise we shoud give partners a notional salary equivalent to a well- paid assistant and add on an appropriate amount to cover pension purchase and interest on working capital. Some differentiate between different categories of partner reflecting experience or expertise or speciality. Others say

that the notional salary should be the minimum return the partner expects to receive at the end of the year. Some argue that in fixing budget figures we should not take the target income for partners but take a sum equivalent to an assistant's salary as a notional salary for a partner in working out the formula. I think some of these approaches are not consistent with a costing operation and can lead to confusion. However, without arguing the issue further let us use a figure of £23,000 for each partner for both budget income and notional salary (including pension provision and interest on working capital) — a total of £69,000. This makes the minimum gross fee income required to cover expenditure (including partner income) £249,000. We now have the essential information to put in the formula to calculate the hourly cost rate for each partner, qualified assistant, unqualified assistant and trainee — the estimated expenditure, the chargeable hours and the actual or notional salaries. The simplest formula would simply be to divide the total expenditure (£249,000) by the sum of the chargeable hours for all the fee earners. If the total chargeable hours amount to 10,150 the hourly cost rate is £24.50 for each fee earner, but this does not reflect the different salaries paid to each fee earner and fixes the cost for the trainee at the same as the partner. It is therefore normal to calculate the hourly cost rate taking into account the different actual or notional salaries. The formula can be structured to relate the total expenditure to each fee earner either according to his chargeable hours and actual or notional salary or partly on that basis and partly on a per capita basis. The Law Society booklet uses a formula which calculates hourly cost rates partly per capita and partly according to salary (actual or notional). On this basis and using the above figures (see the calculation below) the partner rate rounded off is £46.00 per hour, the first qualified assistant is £23.00, etc. With the time recording system and these figures for 1984/85 our three-partner firm can calculate what it has cost them to do any particular piece of work. They should also be able to ascertain at each stage how much the work has so far cost. SUMMONS SERVERS LIMITED Telephone: 370788

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