International Law

I've been thinking about those professions where your self -worth is given a number as a part of your job. TV people have ratings. Authors get Amazon rankings. Performers count the people in the seats at each performance. Waiters get tips which are supposed to have some correlation to the quality of service. These determine how much these various people earn but more to the point of my interest, they also inform the way people think about themselves. For authors, a good Amazon ranking can make or ruin their day. So what other professions have this quality?

I've also asked this question on my facebook page.

What about the legal profession? Could it also be considered a profession with daily measurement? My initial answer was no, but then I began to think a little bit more about what matters to many lawyers: money.

You could make an argument that money is the daily measurement for many lawyers. It could be based upon the value of a deal or commercial transaction. Or it could it be on the size of a damages judgment won. However, both of those aren't exactly daily measurements. Some lawyers may not even complete one major transaction, or successfully litigate a matter all the way to trial and subsequently judgment, in one year.

Just as I was prepared to give up on my somewhat cynical (and probably unfair) reduction of what matters to lawyers, it occurred to me that there is a daily measurement closely related to money that is important to many lawyers: the billable hour. Solicitors in Australia are required to account for their time in 6 minute intervals and how much time you are able to bill at the end of the day is not only important to many solicitors, it is also used as a measure of prestige by the law firm itself.

The problem with this is that unlike the other professions John Dickerson mentions, the concept of billable hours has no meaningful relationship to the quality of the work the lawyer is doing, just the quantity. So if the billable hour really is a daily measurement valued by some in the profession then it is a sorry state of affairs. And perhaps explains why so many in the community have such little regard for lawyers and the work they do.