Momentum answers
How many hours do firm owners spend on admin each week?
There's no dependable industry-wide figure, because it depends entirely on how much approval and paperwork still routes through the owner instead of someone else. The more revealing test isn't a benchmark hour count — it's whether the business visibly slows down the day the owner is unreachable, which is a symptom, not a number to look up.
Owners tend to undercount this because admin work rarely feels like "work" the way billable hours do — it's scattered across email replies, approvals, and quick checks throughout the day rather than sitting in one visible block.
A more useful exercise than searching for an average is tracking your own week: every time you stop billable or growth work to approve, sign off, or answer an internal question, note it. Most owners are surprised by how much of the week that adds up to once it's actually logged.