Book excerpt: If you have ever struggled with billing, found yourself at the end of a stressful, busy day, or week, with nothing on paper to show for it, you are going to learn to bill smarter, bill more efficiently and, more importantly, bill more ethically. You are going to reclaim your lost time. If you want to bill more--and we all do--this book is for you. If you are not capturing all of your billable tasks, you are losing time. If you are a law clerk, you are diminishing your likelihood for employment. If you are an associate, you are reducing your prospects for partnership. And, if you are a partner, you are not getting paid for all of the work you are performing. No matter what type of law you practice or the size of your firm, if you bill by the hour, these tips and techniques will help you learn to bill more efficiently, and spend less time documenting your time and reviewing your bills, leaving you more time to perform more billable tasks. You will also learn how to avoid block-billing, generic task entries, and task descriptions that do not meet client billing guidelines. With the second edition of The Billable Hour, you can bill more, easily and ethically, using time-tested manual timekeeping methods as well as timekeeping software new to the market. You just have to learn to document your time contemporaneously in a manner that meets client criteria. This guide will show you how. You are doing the work. I want to make sure you get paid for it.