Recently, there was a piece about what lawyers do with their time on an average day and the average amount of time a lawyer spends on billable hours is 2.3 hours per day (roughly 30% of her/his workday).  The rest of the time is spent on other tasks like administrative work or business development.  We performed an analysis of billing data using our Compliance Engine to give a picture about what lawyers/timekeepers do when they bill.

Long story short: Lawyers are busy.  They just aren't always busy with your matter.

If someone were to mandate that everyone increase their billable output by 2x each day based only on the statistic of 2.3 hours without any other data points then other important tasks (business development) will fall on the list of priorities.  This creates a domino effect which would probably lead to some unhappy employees and lost business.  It is important to drill deeper into your data for more context and a more complete picture to determine if that decision is the right one.

It also reminds me of the misquoted Edward Deming line: "You can't manage what you can't measure."  What he actually said was you shouldn't run a company or organization purely on statistics alone.  Both quotes contain good advice.  Data and metrics are important pieces of your decision-making arsenal.  Use them to prove or disprove your conclusion.  Ultimately, using that data to make the right decision for your clients and workforce is what really matters.