Pricing

The Myths and Legends of Billing on the Loo - #2

There is no end to the creativity that hourly pricing has spawned.

The Lawyer recently published an entertaining article entitled Financial year-end: The myths and legends of billing on the loo.

Which got me thinking about some of the interesting and esoteric justifications for charging clients that have not withstood scrutiny. I recall an example from my days as a Law Society cost assessor in New Zealand, having to disallow a charge made by the solicitor for a deceased estate, for attending the client’s funeral for no other reason than idle curiosity. Read more...

Pricing for law firms

There can't be many lawyers who enjoy negotiating fees or taking calls from unhappy clients who have just looked at their fee note. Pricing and price discussions tend to feel like problems, to be avoided as far as possible.

At the same time, maximising fee income is clearly critical to the success of the firm – and of individual partners and associates, whose status and career prospects are closely linked to the income they generate.

The days when lawyers could rely on working on an hourly rate, increasing year on year, are fast disappearing. A more sophisticated approach to pricing helps you win new clients, strengthens relationships and builds your reputation for offering good value. Read more...

How Financial Services Companies can Better Control Law Firm Rate Hikes

Financial services companies have fallen behind insurers in holding the line on rate hikes this past year, new data shows.

Banks and insurers often top the list of clients exerting the most pressure on law firm billing, but recent data shows financial services shops let that cost consciousness slip in recent months.

Legal departments of companies operating in the financial sector can control rate increases and rein in outside legal spend if they have options and are working with multiple firms, Nathan Cemenska, director of legal operations and industry insights at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, said. Read more...

6 Tactics to Immediately Improve Your Pitches and Proposals

Law firm marketers have boundless energy around pitches and RFPs — pro and con. As do clients and the attorneys working on these pitches and pursuits. We heard from them all — in droves after our last 2 posts. They all focused on 2 schools of thought:

• What clients want to see
• How to differentiate your pitch

I recommend the following 6 strategies and tactics to engage potential clients, differentiate your firm, and win more work — all in use and winning business: Read more...

For Services Partially Rendered? Firms Get Creative on Fee Arrangements

An unpredictable economy and tough deal market is requiring some alternative structures to make both client and firm whole.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Whether you credit the sentiment to Danish physicist Niehls Bohr, film producer Samuel Goldwyn or Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra, you can probably be confident in one thing: it’s likely none of them had law firm fee structures in mind when they articulated it. Read more...

What $1,000 an Hour Gets You in the Am Law 200 Today

Second-year associates and 19th-year partners share the same billing rate in recent bankruptcy filings.

Inflation be damned, $1,000 is still a lot of money. In exchange for $1,000, you can have a smokeless fire pit, an eight-person inflatable swimming pool or a drone quadcopter, according to thingsineedtobuy.com.

Last week, Legal Twitter users scoffed at the revelation that they could instead spend about $1,000 on one hour of lawyering performed by a second-year associate at Kirkland & Ellis, per a recent fee application in the bankruptcy of Voyager Digital Holdings surfaced by ex-Greenberg Traurig lawyer Robert Freund of Robert Freund Law. Read more...

All Eyes Are on the Middle Market as Larger Firms See Big Money in Smaller Deals

Falling demand in corporate practices has meant a return to more modest transactions for Am Law Second 50 firms that seized big-ticket deals in the deal boom of 2021, and increasingly, large firms are looking to capture work where it is available—and much of it is in the middle market.

Competition for midmarket deal work is heating up.

Falling demand in corporate practices has meant a return to more modest transactions for Am Law Second 50 firms that seized big-ticket deals in the deal boom of 2021, according to firm leaders and industry consultants, and increasingly, large firms are looking to capture work where it is available—and much of it is in the middle market. Read more...

Costs

SRA set to cap fees for handling mis-selling claims

The SRA today proposed to place a cap on the amounts solicitors can charge for running financial mis-selling claims. The new limits largely replicate the existing bandings used by the Financial Conduct Authority and have been drawn up in response to concerns about excessive charges being levied against clients.

Under the proposals, solicitors would be able to charge no more than £10,000 for claims worth more than £50,000. Costs are limited to £7,500 for claims between £25,000 and £50,000 and go down incrementally to £420 for all claims worth less than £1,500. Read more...