Practice News

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. I am the managing partner of a 14 attorney law firm located in Nashville, Tenn. We have 8 equity partners. The firm represents business and other institutional clients and handles transactional work as well as litigation. Each partner over the years has accumulated "partnership interest" percentages and these interests are used totally to determine annual compensation as well as ownership in the firm. The only numbers that matter in our firm are billable hours -- not dollars -- and billable hour reports are all that we have ever looked at when reviewing associate performance or partner contribution. We are now beginning to question the wisdom of this approach -- should be considering more than hours? A. Billable hours alone is a poor indicator of associate or partner performance and you should include more measures/metrics in the analysis. More and more law firms today realize that partner contribution and value goes beyond and involves much more than “billable hours” and their compensation systems incorporate other factors into the analysis. Billable hours is just one metric in the overall equation. Many law firms focus on various measures of revenue dollars - fees billed, fees collected, etc. The next question is what kind of fee dollars - working attorney, responsible (managing) attorney, or originating attorney. Fees collected by working attorney seems to be the primary focus of smaller law firms. Origination (attorney that brought in the client) attorney fees collected is often part of the mix as well. Very seldom do we see responsible attorney fees collected considered.

The Illinois Supreme Court has announced that Matthew G. Bertani received a majority of the votes cast by the circuit judges in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit and has been appointed to the office of associate judge. Mr. Bertani received his undergraduate degree in 1983 from Drake University and his Juris Doctor in 1988 from the University of Arizona. Mr. Bertani is currently affiliated with Sabuco, Beck, Hansen, Schrock & Bertani in Joliet, Illinois.

At the end of a decade during which Illinois' death penalty system was the focus of much national and international attention and debate, the Illinois General Assembly's Capital Punishment Reform Study Committee (CPRSC) released its final report, which summarizes a six year study of reforms enacted in 2003, and makes recommendations for further reforms. The expert committee created by the Illinois General Assembly was comprised of appointees by leadership in both political parties, the Governor, and both prosecution and defense teams from around the state. The panel was chaired by Thomas P. Sullivan, former U.S. Attorney and co-chair of the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment, whose 2002 report led to legislative reforms to Illinois' death penalty system. Both Illinois Governors since then have observed a moratorium on executions, while the CPRSC evaluated the impact and sufficiency of the enacted reforms. The extensive final report was sent to leaders in the Illinois General Assembly, and is now available online at the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority website listed below. At the final report release, CPRSC chair Sullivan said, "After six years of study and analysis, the Committee found several issues which still should be addressed in the Illinois capital punishment system, many the very same as those identified in April 2002 by the Governor's Commission. We also found that there is a tremendous additional cost entailed when the death penalty is sought, and what appears to be a trend by prosecutors to ask for the death penalty in order to shift costs from the local counties to the State, and to increase their bargaining power in negotiations for pleas of guilty."

The Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago seeks to hire up to six Public Benefits Enrollment Paralegals. Click here to learn more.