Fee-earner utilisation: how to measure it properly

Fee-earner utilisation is the percentage of a fee-earner's available working hours spent on chargeable client work. The formula is chargeable hours recorded divided by available hours, times 100. A fee-earner with 120 chargeable hours in a month of 150 available hours has 80% utilisation. The number only means something once the firm fixes what counts as "available".

This post covers the formula, the choices behind it, how utilisation differs from realisation and collection, and the traps that make a good-looking number misleading. It is part of our series on what a fee-earner is. Nothing here is financial advice; for how these measures feed your accounts, speak to your accountant.

How do you calculate fee-earner utilisation?

The basic formula:

Utilisation = chargeable hours recorded ÷ available hours × 100

Both halves need a definition, written down and used every month.

• Chargeable hours recorded: time recorded against client matters as chargeable, whether or not it is later billed. On fixed fee work, this is time recorded against the matter even though the bill is fixed.
• Available hours: the hours the fee-earner could reasonably have spent working. Most firms use contracted hours less holiday, bank holidays and sickness. Some also take out agreed non-chargeable time, such as training or management, which gives a different and usually higher number.

The second choice matters more than people expect. The same fee-earner can show 62% on one denominator and 78% on another, with no change in how they worked. If you compare fee-earners, or compare against anything published, check the denominator first.

What counts as chargeable time?

Firms draw the line differently, which is another reason utilisation figures rarely compare across firms. A workable default, to adapt to your own practice:

• Chargeable: work on a client's matter that the retainer allows you to charge for, including calls, emails, drafting, research, attendances and travel where agreed.
• Non-chargeable but productive: supervision, training, knowledge work, business development, pitching, internal meetings, file reviews and compliance tasks.
• Non-chargeable and avoidable: taking details for new enquiries that another route could handle, rearranging appointments, chasing information that a client update would have prompted, and looking for notes somebody else took.

The third category is the interesting one. It is time the firm pays for, that nobody can bill, and that does not need a lawyer. It rarely appears on any report, because it is either recorded vaguely as "admin" or not recorded at all.

What is the difference between utilisation, realisation and collection?

They measure three different leaks, and they are easiest to understand in sequence:

• Utilisation: of the hours available, how many were recorded as chargeable?
• Realisation: of the chargeable hours recorded, how much value was actually billed? Time written down or written off reduces it.
• Collection: of the amount billed, how much was actually paid?

Multiply the three together and you get the share of a fee-earner's potential that reaches the bank. A fee-earner can be highly utilised and still earn the firm little if realisation or collection is poor. Our sibling posts on lock-up and work in progress cover the later stages.

A worked example: two fee-earners, one month

Two hypothetical fee-earners, with invented figures, each with 150 available hours in the month:

• Fee-earner A records 125 chargeable hours (83% utilisation). 25 hours are written off because a fixed fee was underpriced, so 100 hours are billed (80% realisation). The client pays in full (100% collection). Result: 100 of 150 hours reach the bank, or 67%.
• Fee-earner B records 105 chargeable hours (70% utilisation). 100 are billed (95% realisation) and all are paid. Result: 100 of 150 hours reach the bank, also 67%.

On a utilisation league table, A looks clearly better. On cash, they are identical, and A has spent 20 more hours to get there. If the firm only watches utilisation, it rewards the pattern that is costing it time.

What is a good utilisation rate for a fee-earner?

There is no single right figure, and it is worth being wary of anyone who offers one without saying what it is measured against. The honest answer depends on four things:

• Seniority. A partner who supervises, manages and wins work will record less chargeable time than a busy junior, and should.
• Work type. Volume fixed fee work, advisory work and litigation have very different time profiles.
• The denominator. As above, the same person can be 62% or 78% depending on what "available" means.
• What is expected of the role. Supervision, training and business development are real work. A target that ignores them will push people to under-record them.

Many published benchmarks come from US practice-management vendors, are built from their own users' data, and use their own definitions. They can be interesting. They are not a standard for a UK firm. The better benchmark is your own firm's history, by role and team, on a consistent definition.

Why does utilisation look fine while the month feels awful?

Because utilisation only counts recorded time. It is blind to three things fee-earners feel every day:

• Unrecorded small work. A three-minute client call to confirm nothing has changed is often not recorded at all. Twenty of them a week is an hour gone, invisibly.
• Fragmentation. The same 6 chargeable hours in one long stretch and in twelve broken pieces produce the same utilisation, and very different quality and fatigue.
• Work that should not be the fee-earner's. Taking a new enquiry's details, rebooking appointments and answering "any news?" calls count as non-chargeable time or are not recorded at all. Either way, they come out of the day.

How can a firm measure the hidden side?

Add two small measures alongside utilisation for one month. We have not seen either in the standard guides, and both are cheap:

• Interruption count. For one week, fee-earners who volunteer tally inbound calls and messages that were not about moving a matter forward. No time recording, just a tick.
• Longest uninterrupted stretch. At the end of each day, each volunteer notes the longest period they worked without being interrupted.

Read the two against utilisation. A fee-earner with healthy utilisation, a high interruption count and a short longest stretch is producing their hours under strain. That profile deserves a conversation before it becomes a resignation, and it is exactly the one a utilisation report will praise. Repeat the exercise a month after any change you make, so you can see whether the interruption count actually fell.

How do you improve fee-earner utilisation without burning people out?

Improving utilisation by asking for more hours is the least useful lever. The better levers take work off the fee-earner rather than adding to it:

• Capture the time already being worked. Contemporaneous recording is more accurate than reconstructing a day from memory on Friday.
• Move non-legal work away from fee-earners. New enquiry calls, appointment booking and routine status updates should go to someone, or something, else.
• Update clients before they ask. A short update at each stage heads off much of the inbound "any news?" contact. See matter updates for clients.
• Protect focus time. Blocks in the diary that colleagues respect.
• Fix realisation problems at source. If a fee type is always written down, reprice it rather than pushing people to record more time against it.

How should utilisation be reported?

A few habits make the number much more useful:

• Report by role and grade, not as one firm figure. A single firm-wide utilisation rate blends partners, associates and paralegals whose expected profiles are completely different. The court's fee-earner grades A to D are a convenient way to group them.
• Show a rolling three-month figure next to the month. One heavy trial month or one fortnight of holiday distorts a single month badly.
• Put realisation next to it, always. Utilisation without realisation invites the pattern in the worked example above.
• Never publish a ranked league table. It encourages recording to the table rather than to the work, and it is corrosive for the people at the bottom, who may be the ones supervising everybody else.

Does utilisation work differently for partners?

Yes. A partner's week includes managing the firm, winning work, supervising and dealing with the hardest client conversations. A partner with low recorded utilisation may be the reason everyone else's is high. Compare partners with partners, on a definition that recognises management time, and look at the fees their teams generate as well as their own recorded hours.

What should you do when a fee-earner's utilisation drops?

Ask before you act. A falling figure has many causes, and only some of them are about effort:

• Less work arriving. Check the pipeline for their team before anything else.
• More non-chargeable work, such as a new trainee, a management project or a pitch.
• Recording habits slipping under pressure, so work is done but not recorded.
• Interruptions rising, often after a support role changed or a colleague left.
• Personal circumstances, which need a supportive conversation, not a report.

Each cause has a different fix, and only a conversation tells you which one applies.

Should utilisation be a target?

It can be part of one, but on its own it tends to reward the wrong things. LawCare's Life in the Law 2025 research found that only 31% of respondents who managed others said their targets or billable hours were adjusted for the time management and training take. A utilisation target that ignores supervision tells your best supervisors to stop supervising. How to set a target that does not backfire is covered in setting fee-earner targets, and what to show fee-earners day to day is in what belongs on a fee-earner dashboard.

Where does WasilX fit?

In the hidden side of the day. Cam, our AI Engagement Coordinator, takes calls on the firm's line at any hour, says it is AI, asks the firm's own qualifying questions, books the call back and sends the firm a summary. Each fee-earner's personal assistant covers their calls in court and drafts matter updates for the fee-earner to approve. The effect we care about is fewer interruptions reaching the fee-earner, which utilisation alone will not show you. If you would like to talk it through, get in touch.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate fee-earner utilisation? Divide chargeable hours recorded by available hours and multiply by 100. The result depends heavily on how "available hours" is defined, so write the definition down and use it consistently.

What is a good utilisation rate for a fee-earner? It depends on seniority, work type and the definition used. The most useful benchmark is your own firm's history by role on a consistent definition, rather than a published average from a different market.

What is the difference between utilisation and realisation? Utilisation measures how much available time was recorded as chargeable. Realisation measures how much of that recorded time was actually billed. A fee-earner can score well on one and badly on the other.

Does utilisation apply to fixed fee work? Yes, if time is recorded against fixed fee matters. It shows how much of a fee-earner's time the fixed fee work is consuming, which is essential to knowing whether the fee is priced correctly.

Why is high utilisation not always good? Because it only counts recorded chargeable time. It cannot see interruptions, fragmented days or time written off later, so a fee-earner can show high utilisation while under strain or while generating little billed value.