Free playbook · made for your phone · twenty-minute read
20–30% of billable time goes to work that does not need a lawyer.
A playbook on sorting that work into three lanes, handing it over so it stays handed over, and keeping the hours that build your practice.
The hours are not lost to anything dramatic. They go to chasing a document someone else has, re-explaining a matter to the person now covering it, writing up time three days after the work, and checking whether the thing you handed over on Tuesday actually moved.
Every one of those is delegable in principle. Most partners have tried. What usually comes back is the same task with a question attached, and the conclusion forms quietly: it is faster to do it myself.
That conclusion is not about the people. It is about which lane the work was in when it left your desk. The playbook is about the lanes.
Where the figure comes from: 20–30% is what practising lawyers have told us, in their own words, about the time that goes to admin and to time entries written up after the fact. It is not a published study and it is not a measurement of your firm. Test it against last week's diary before you believe it.
Inside the playbook:
- The truth test. Measure last week, not the week you meant to have, and see who should really hold each task.
- Your buyback rate. One number, worked from your own income, that sorts the list.
- Reclaim, Reassign, Replace. Every task on your desk belongs in one of three lanes, with the question that sorts it.
- Why handovers fail, and the five-part brief. The four reasons work comes back wrong, and a brief you can say in thirty seconds.
- Authority levels, 10-80-10 and 1-3-1. How to stop checking everything without losing control of the work.
Four exercises, each built on the one before, and your first handover planned by the end. It is laid out to read on your phone.
A free resource from Sonnet Advisors for managing partners and senior lawyers at independent firms.