Lawyer Who Ditched Billable Hours Spends Remarkable Amount of Time Talking About It

 15 April 2026

Melbourne — A Melbourne lawyer who left a large commercial firm to escape what he described as the profession’s “outdated obsession with time” has since spent a significant amount of time explaining this decision.

Oliver Grant, founder of Horologium Legal, said the firm was created to move beyond billable hours and toward what he describes as a “value-based framework.”

“Time is a legacy construct,” Grant said. “It doesn’t reflect value.”

Colleagues, clients and acquaintances say the topic has since become unavoidable.

“It comes up constantly,” said former colleague James Liu. “You ask how he’s going and you get a ten-minute explanation of why minutes are meaningless.”

At a local gym, CrossFit instructor Daniel Kerr reported similar issues.

“We were just trying to get through the workout,” Kerr said. “He stopped everyone to explain that he doesn’t measure time or reps.”

Instead, Grant records what he calls “movement value units.”

“It’s about the outcome of the movement,” Grant told the group. “Not how long it takes.”

Kerr said exercises that took longer appeared to attract higher value.

“He said that was just intensity,” Kerr said.

Kerr, who acknowledged that CrossFit participants can be enthusiastic, said the approach was nonetheless disruptive.

“We talk about CrossFit,” he said. “But we don’t usually stop the workout to redefine it.”

Grant’s neighbour, Peter Hargreaves, a Seventh-day Adventist, said Grant frequently visits to discuss his billing model.

“He comes over and starts explaining it,” Hargreaves said. “Quite regularly.”

“We take our beliefs seriously,” he said. “But we don’t usually deliver them uninvited in the driveway.”

Amelia Brooks, a vegan who met Grant at a café, said the experience was similar.

“I just wanted to have lunch,” Brooks said. “I don’t need a lecture every time I sit down to eat.”

She said Grant arrived late.

“He doesn’t wear a watch anymore,” she said. “Because time is part of the problem.”

She paused.

“I talk about veganism,” she said. “But I let people finish their lunch.”

Grant said he is simply trying to modernise the profession.

“Clients don’t buy time,” he said. “They buy outcomes.”

Under Grant’s model, work is not recorded in units of time but allocated across a series of pre-defined activity categories, each assigned a fixed value. These include “strategic email engagement,” “extended matter reflection,” and “high-value thinking.”

Observers noted that activities assigned higher values tend to require more time to complete.

Grant said the relationship was incidental.

Industry observers note that the death of the billable hour has been formally announced many times since the 1980s. It has survived each of them.

“It is perhaps the most resilient construct in professional services,” said one legal pricing consultant. “It has outlived every conference panel convened to discuss its replacement.”

Grant said his model reflects genuine structural change, not incremental adjustment.

“Think about a haircut,” he said. “You don’t pay for the time. You pay for the outcome.”

Observers noted that more complex haircuts tend to take longer.

Grant said that was not the point.

At press time, Grant was explaining to a client that his firm no longer records time, while carefully allocating the previous forty-five minutes of the meeting across several categories of high-value engagement.

A vegan, a CrossFitter and a Seventh-day Adventist walk into a bar and ask: is this a joke? A lawyer answers: I have to give a disclaimer that this is a work of satire.