Is being overly-conscious of one’s time and value a good thing?

That’s a pretty interesting question. I don’t think that being conscious of how much time you spend doing things is bad in and of itself. Maybe it’s because my dad made me read that “Habits of Highly Effective Teens” book, but I’ve felt for awhile that I would be a lot more effective worker if I kept better track of my time. I don’t think that this mindset by itself will result in you being boring and a drag to be around. That probably comes from feeling like all that effort you put into managing your times has gone to waste or resulted in something not worthwhile.

As compared to undergrad I’m definitely more conscious of my time, but I’m not sure that the law school “environment” and the omni-present spectre of the billable hour looming above us is exactly the “cause” of this. The biggest factor is probably just that there’s more work being laid out to do and you have to be more efficient if you want to do it all – and get a decent amount of sleep. Is this just to numb us to the countless hours of hour billing that await 80% of us? Or maybe we can see it as a general training on how to work well quickly when it comes to reading and writing ideas.

The discrepancy between the market rate to retain him as an employee and the market rate for his services to clients is such that the firm will be reaping profits from his work for 80% of the year.

Can you categorize the amount a firm bills for an hour’s worth of time as a “market rate”? Clients aren’t going to be paying him the same amount they pay the firm – most likely the law economy is set up so they wouldn’t pay him at all. Market rate works a lot better to describe his salary since he can probably get a comparable job/salary elsewhere. The money’s definitely at the top though, although you can say this for a whole lot of industries. It might be exemplified by the way the BIGLAW system works, but I’m not sure that it’s a problem endemic to it.

-- JustinChung - 03 Feb 2009

-- JustinChung - 03 Feb 2009