Why Lawyers are Expensive Move Managers

Are you juggling a move, on top of career and family? Hiring move managers saves your sanity, but it may save money too! Some simple calculations will show how the value of your time adds up quickly. Let’s use attorney income in an example since Washington DC has the nation’s highest concentration of lawyers. Use your hourly value (if salaried, time value calculators are online), plug it into Hourly Rate X # Hours of Work, then compare to the cost of move help:

Lawyers Are Expensive “Move Managers”

We’ll assume a top-to-bottom move from a 4-bedroom house, which can easily take 20 full days or 160 hours. Don’t forget there is pre-pack decluttering, hiring a moving company, junk haul-away, packing, move day, unpacking and new home organization, etc. Let’s use a $662 hourly rate, which was the average billable rate for DC lawyers in 2012. This block of time multiplied by $662 is $105,920 in lost potential income – a very expensive move!

Opportunity Cost

Hiring a move manager means the 160 hours can instead be invested by our lawyer in income producing activities generating billable hours, or at least meeting with prospective clients and partners. Even if only half end up billable hours, the opportunity cost of self-managing the move is $52,960! Compare to spending $10,000 on a professional moving manager. By the way, we are not factoring in any time off work by your spouse or others.

Guard Valuable Vacation Time

Those 20 days must come from somewhere. They may largely be at the expense of lost billable hours, but may also cut into annual leave. According to the American Lawyer, the average vacation time taken by their surveyed lawyers in 2013 was only 12.5 days. Client demands and high billable-hour requirements make it difficult for many lawyers to take wanted vacations. Life is short – is DIY worth it?

Avoid Emotional Toll

DIY requires living in chaos for many of those 20 days. It can also cut into precious time with the kids. Hiring help allows a whole team of efficient professionals to complete the move of an average 4-bedroom home in as few as 2 days.

Contact Potomac Concierge/The Moving Managers today to find out just what a moving manager from our company can do for you, and how affordable it can be to leave the work to someone else.