Time tracking by in-house counsel as a department-wide obligation does not appeal to me, I will admit, but I feel differently about an individual lawyer who keeps a personal record of what that lawyer does. Once you recognize that you only have so much time to devote to work and that you should spend it frugally and thoughtfully, it is a short step to keeping some notes on how you spend your work time. A person could do this back-of-the envelope recording at the same time they set priorities for the next day.
Some time back I assembled my posts on internal time tracking (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: internal time tracking with 16 references.). Since then, nine more additions to that topic have been published here(See my post of Aug. 10, 2009 #3: Abbott Labs’ attorneys track pro bono time; Aug. 27, 2009: track time by percentages instead of actual; Nov. 5, 2009: lawyers see little personal benefit in database data entry; Nov. 10, 2009: arguments for and against tracking internal time; April 13, 2010: fully-loaded costs are more accurate with time tracking; May 18, 2010: track time by periodic screen shots; July 25, 2010: Chrometa tracking software; July 26, 2010: wrong to set minimum chargeable hours inside; and Aug. 22, 2010: rely on phone calls to estimate time.).