Screeds have been written for more than two decades about the demise of the billable hour. Like Mark Twain, news of whose death was greatly exaggerated, the billable hour persists with all the tenacity and survival skills of a cockroach emerging from a nuclear winter.

And so it will persist despite concerted efforts by some on both the buy and sell sides to eradicate it as an unwelcome if not toxic blot on the law firm management landscape.

With Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your morning pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your legal services pricing challenges.

With Validatum Pricing Espresso® we aim to bring you your morning pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your legal services pricing challenges.

“As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.” John Glenn - the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth

With 'The Pricing Espresso®' we aim to bring you your morning pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your firms' pricing challenges.

In our conference presentations and consulting work, we have often made reference to the fact that when it comes to pricing, we lawyers could do worse than take inspiration from the often far more sophisticated pricing strategies of other industries and professions. We have for example taken and adapted some of the best pricing ideas and practices from hotel chains (yield management), airlines (customer segmentation and price discrimination), and fast food franchises (bundling) to name a few.

With 'The Pricing Espresso®' we aim to bring you your morning pricing 'shot' - the best, most interesting, thought provoking and informative material we can find globally which will be of interest, relevance and help to you in your firms' pricing challenges.

Most of us are familiar with Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiments. It is therefore obvious to most that the best way to get the behaviour you want is to provide rewards for doing so, or at least refrain from punishing people for doing them. The flip side is that you have to make sure you’re not inadvertently providing rewards for behaviors you’re trying to discourage.

The classical definition of the 4 Ps relates of course to the categories that can be controlled in the marketing of a good or service: product, price, place and promotion. The four Ps, often referred to as the marketing mix, are all constrained by internal and external factors in the overall environment.

Yet another recent media report left me feeling for colleagues who are continually attacked by the politicians, the media and the public for apparently outrageous and indefensible fees charged by lawyers. This egregious behaviour is only exacerbated in the minds of many when the poor recipients of the nasty lawyers financial flogging are people going through an acrimonious divorce.

And now the judiciary, who ought to know better, have joined the chorus.

When presented with a range of pricing choices, are client’s more likely to make a rational or irrational decision? In recent years behavioural economists have generally supported the concept of ‘homoeconomicus”; buyers characterised as powerful, calculating decision-makers who base their decisions on rational, objective and consistent preferences.

Pricing in law firms began, and to a shocking degree still continues, as an exercise in sticking your finger in the wind combined with intensive (but plausibly deniable!) efforts to find out what they're doing down the block, finalized by Kentucky windage in the form of a percentage increase over your rates last year. Low-tech, impressionistic and intuitive, data-free, and almost certain to be random in its accuracy in correlating clients' perception of value with marketplace dynamics. Or, as one managing partner we're fond of described it: "The dark art."