The Vital Role of Pricing in Law Firm Marketing & BD Efforts

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. Read more...

Lack of fee clarity causes one in four complaints - Ombudsman

More than a quarter (26%) of complaints to the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) are triggered by lack of clarity on fees, a major internal survey has found. Read more...

Judicial Cop-out: Just Blame The Lawyers Fees

Yet another recent media report left us 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. Read more...

Courts confused on CFAs

At the Association of Cost Lawyers' annual conference last week, barrister PJ Kirby QC pointed out an area of the law where the courts have been giving out worryingly inconsistent messages – sometimes with a big impact on solicitors. Read more...

The Last Frontier: Profitable Pricing for Law Firms Conference (Australia & New Zealand)

In conjunction with beatonlive, Richard Burcher will conduct the first world-class pricing conference and satellite master class for corporate and commercial law firms in Australia and New Zealand.

• Why and how clients are changing their procurement of legal services
• The role price plays as a quality and value signal for different work types
• Latest research on the moderating effects of cost consciousness
• World's best practice in pricing corporate and commercial legal services
• Practical ways to improve your firm's pricing
  • Governance
  • Analytics
  • Execution
• Developing your firm's pricing capability
• Winning partners' hearts and minds on pricing

Read more...

Value is a moveable feast

Defining value differs from one client to the next, a new survey has revealed. Wicker Park Group analysed 800 interviews from 2011-2014 for how often clients discussed five critical performance areas: Read more...

Canadian Lawyer: The Journey from the Billable Hour to Value Based Flat Fees

Most lawyers will tell you it is impossible to bill on a flat-fee basis. They will claim "our work is too customised" or "there are far too many unknowns to ever predict cost." Surprisingly, these same lawyers also pitch that they "are experts in their field" and "have handled many cases just like yours. Read more...

Law Firms and GCs Finding Value in Alternative Billing

It's been over 20 years since corporate legal departments publicly asked for alternative fees when DuPont Legal began the trend with its convergence model. The former general counsel for DuPont and current partner at Ballard Spahr, Tom Sager, was the frontrunner in implementing alternative fee arrangements, or AFAs, and said "the impetus for this was a mass tort explosion confronting DuPont and with it the compelling need to drive efficiency, reduce costs and incentivise the firms for outstanding results. Read more...

The Power of Irrational Pricing

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. Read more...

Pricing and analytics: Houston, we have a problem!

The refrain; "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there", is essentially a paraphrase of an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'. Read more...

Lexis Nexis - Pricing: An Under-utilised Weapon in Law Firms

Deriving 'value' from legal service providers continues to be the mantra for general counsel (GC) in 2015. Recently, Royal Dutch Shell appointed a global sourcing officer to manage its pricing arrangements with external counsel in a bid to control costs and ensure greater value from panel firms. Read more...

Why clients of BigLaw firms value cost consciousness

Research by Beaton continues to show why clients of BigLaw firms value cost consciousness. If you understand what cost conscious really means to clients, this may not surprise you. But, did you also know that being well rated on cost consciousness by clients allows a firm to exercise price-setting discretion? In other words, you can raise your price – at least to some degree depending on the circumstances – and the clients perception of the value you deliver stays the same. Or even goes up. Read more...

Straight From the Horse’s Mouth – GCs Say What They Want From Outside Firms

We recently attended a private meeting held in Panama with the General Counsel of 35 global corporations. Given the differences in their businesses, geography, cultures and operational envelopes, one would surmise that they saw their practices, priorities and peeves quite differently. Not so: it would be fair to say that there were more areas of concordance in their thinking as there were differences and disagreements. Plain speaking was the order of the day. Read more...