[BuckRogers]

The lawyer comparison is completely accurate but people shouldn't get too carried away without tempering it with the realities of the legal industry. You're billing correctly (like a lawyer) but may not be as valuable as a good lawyer.

If the problem you're solving is more of a general dev task, which 95% of tasks are then it's like a lawyer that is merely processing immigration paperwork. You're paying for it to be done right. Billing for research when you're writing CRUD apps is a good example of this.

If you're a Robert Shapiro or some hotshot taking on special cases, and winning, then you can probably bill for research. Billing for research when you're John Carmack qualifies here.

So I think the lawyer comparison is 100%. You should bill for every second. Just make sure you're not on par with the lawyer equivalent of needing to do research when building a CRUD app and you won't have any problem.

[ak39]

I don't agree with this approach. It's interesting but I don't see how the nature of the work you're doing disqualifies you from charging for "research" even when you're NOT a hotshot.

I think a better approach would be to charge per day.

[BuckRogers]

I'd be pretty pissed off if I was charged a lot of money for "research" to have some lawyer file run of the mill divorce papers or immigration paperwork. It's like hiring a dev to build a CRUD app and he doesn't have basic competence either.

At a certain point, you need to a baseline competence or you shouldn't even be taking the job. If people balk at you for not being ready to even take on the basic job title, that shouldn't be a surprise.

I'm not saying if you come across a corner case that's special you shouldn't charge for it. It's like if you had an exceptional immigration case that required research, not just filing form 1072B.

It's something to keep in mind because you can lose your reputation or clients being silly with the "research 40 hours" act. Sometimes losing a little money today is a win longterm. A lawyer billing research for basic stuff or nonsense that no one else would (learning on the job, basically), would and should lose his clientele.