Hey, I am all for a DC area goon meet. Relwin lives four hours away til August and I am lonely when he isn't around. I have a few friends I graduated with that work for the Patent office in Alexandria, they've mentioned how nice Old Town is, though I've never seen it.

edit: I live in Germantown, MD, so I'm somewhat out of touch with you Viriginians and your cities.

Overbilling probably happens to some extent, but it's really more a thing of the past and/or Grisham novels. Most large corporate clients have billing auditors that will go over law firm bills with a fine-tooth comb and dispute absolutely anything that looks suspect. Attorney A billed 20 minutes for a phone call to Attorney B discussing the case, but Attorney B forgot to bill it? Must never have happened! A says the call lasted 40 minutes but B only billed 25 mintues for it? 25 minutes it is! And so forth. After law firms started getting large chunks of their bills disputed by clients, they in turn started being much more meticulous about billing internally. Having to account for all my time is the most annoying fucking thing about this job, though. Makes me yearn to work in the public sector again, where all that mattered was that I did the work that needed to get done, and did it well.

This thread is officially dead, of course. Sorry Greybone. :P

Yeah, billing time is probably one of the most frustrating things about any job. Thank god mine is in 15minute granularity chunks rather than 5 now. Though with how uncooperative Datalog is being today it doesn't really matter. :ghostfire: :V:

I work for the DoD as an engineer, and it's essentially get in your usual start time +/- 10 minutes, and then just work your assigned hours. I work on the AWS (alternate work schedule) system, so I work 9 hours Monday through Thursday, then a normal 8 hour day on one of the Fridays, with the other one being off.

Every day I'm in though I have to take the mandatory 45 minute lunch. So on normal days I'm here from 7:30 to 5:15, yuck!

The net result, is that if you don't finish it by the end of the day, you just push it on til tomorrow.