An old friend of mine, Alex Hayden-Gilbert (aka @thaipirate on Twitter), recently kindly shared with me a costing proposal from March 1994 that included a line item for ‘computer time’ – something we may consider outrageous today.

But, giving this some more thought, I wonder:-

is charging clients for ‘computer time’ such an outrageous concept today?

To answer this, let’s break this down:-

• you work for a law firm that charges by the hour,
• you are of an age where typing with one finger is acceptable (Baby Boomer or Gen X), and
• you work for a law firm who has cut costs to increase profit per partner and part of that cost cutting includes a reduction in WP and secretarial services – resulting in you needing to do more typing yourself.

Get where I’m going with this?

Yep, from where I’m sitting unless your client has made you pass a typing competency test (say 80 words a minute), then the reality is they are still – some 23 years later – paying for ‘computer time‘.

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