I get the sentiment behind your comment but I have a few lawyers in the family and they work round the clock. They might be in meetings or pouring over documents all day that might not look like work to the average software engineer but trust me, they do work hard. And it's true for everyone - from junior interns to senior partners.

> They might be in meetings or pouring over documents all day

FWIW it’s “poring over” when reading carefully.

From Merriam-Webster

    “As a verb, pore means "to gaze intently" or "to reflect or meditate steadily." The verb pour has meanings referring to the falling or streaming of liquid (or things that move like liquid).”

lawyers have minimum billable time, if they reply to an email in 1min they will still bill you 10-15min. Ask me how I know :(

Wouldn’t you? If I switch context and interrupt my flow to answer a question I’m losing at least 20 mins to regaining focus, why shouldn’t that be reflected in billing?

Knowledge work is knowledge work, no point belittling colleagues in a different profession.

Thats how MSPs operate too. At least the good ones. Billing increments are sometimes as low as 6 minutes, or as high as 30. 15 minutes is average in my experience.

One of my first ever bug reports, was a submission to a company that made legal software.

In particular, it was a document management system built as a plugin for MS Outlook. (ew)

Most users, had no issue. However for one user, a lawyer, in particular, she would open and close a bunch of documents (using the built in pdf viewer) and then the application would crash, taking outlook with it, often requiring a restart.

I went over to view the behavior, and she was some kind of robot. Unlike her peers, she had 12 documents open at once, and she could update and bill (in minimum 6 or 7 minute increments) 12 customers cases in 15 minutes. It was like meeting the Usain Bolt of law practitioners. My back of the napkin math is that she billed like 3-4 hours for every hour she was online.

Open Email

Load Attachment

Review Attachment

Reply to email

Assign Email thread to case number

Close attachment.

12 times in 15 minutes.

The bug was that, after loading ~6 pdfs, the application would back off and wait to deallocate the memory. It would then later, randomly decide to write to that memory when another pdf was loaded, and go kaput.

Just to replicate the issue, I had to close and reopen pdfs so quickly my hands hurt.

It took 3 revisions of the bug report to get the software company to accept it and resolve it. And even then I think the pdf limit just increased, before we submitted another report and had it resolved permanently.

On that note, the principal of another law firm I supported would require us to cleanse his personal laptop of porn themed golf games he had downloaded on a regular basis.

The impression I get is that, lawyers work but the work is just unevenly distributed.

Were they porn-themed golf games, or golf-themed porn games? This is an important distinction.

It’s never occurred to me that either existed but…rule 34, I guess.

Something like Strip-Golf? For every under par she (or he) takes off an item of clothing. For every over they put on one, ha.

Sounds like a game Epstein and Trump (and some "enigmas") could've played at Mar-A-Lago. With cheating, though.

Digging deep in to my memory, I recall that the user had at least one instance of Strip Putt Putt. I cant conceive of how that answers your question but its the best I can do.

> Devil's advocate opinion

Not sure if the pun was intended, but I'm here for it

As a general rule I find lawyers are real honest about their hours, especially as you get to bigger firms.

Anybody have a different experience?