attainment of higher academic rank (Hurlbert and
Rosenfeld 1992; Long, Allison, and McGinniss 1993;
McBrier 2003; Leahey, Keith, and Crockett 2010).
A more problematic example arises in the legal profession,
where some researchers have treated counts
of lawyers’ billable hours as measures of productivity
(e.g. Leahey and Hunter 2012). Although lawyer
hours are (usually) what clients pay for, a count of
hours tells us little about the quality of a lawyer’s
performance (Wilkins and Gulati 1998). In any
event, lawyers who work more hours are more often
promoted to partnership (Kay and Hagan 1998,
1999; Hull and Nelson 2000).