Operations
FTC Lockdown on Legal Tech and Marketing Companies LockIns With Autorenewals
How many times have you signed up for a free trial, then forgot to cancel and were hit with a huge bill? Or signed up for a legal tech or marketing service that you didn’t like so you let it run its course, only to have it auto-renew and lock you in for another term? …
Read MoreEmerging Developments in Flat Fees
Since this last post summarizing 15 states’ ethics opinions on flat fees as of September 2022, there have been some new developments on the flat fee front. None of these rulings are particularly helpful. If anything, they further complicate flat fee billing. Fortunately, there are workarounds to solve the problem, one of which you can…
Read MoreSystemising Your Law Firm While Keeping The Human Element
[sponsored blog post by LexReception.com] Streamlining, optimizing and automating are key to growing or scaling a practice. According to research by Clio, the average lawyer billed just 2.5 hours of an 8-hour day. That means either they do not take on enough clients, or lawyers across the US are struggling with inefficiency. Firms using multiple…
Read MoreBiglaw Late to the Law Template Party
Via the LawSites blog, I learned that biglaw firm Wilson Sonsini’s subsidiary SixFifty just launched a marketplace where businesses can purchase document templates on an ala carte basis. If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because it is: solo and small law firms have been selling templates for years now as a second stream of revenue…
Read MoreHow Much Do Solo and Small Firm Lawyers Earn?
How Much Do Solos Earn? An Excerpt from Solo by Choice: Among its expansive topics, Solo by Choice briefly covers what solos earn – a topic I’ve also addressed at MyShingle here and here. Accurate information on solo salaries are hard to come by given the variation in practices, the fact that many solos also…
Read MoreTo Trust or Not To Trust: What to Do With Flat Fees? (Part I)
Some lawyers refuse to experiment with flat fee billing – not because of confusion over how to set prices or concerns over under-charging — but because they believe that flat fees raise ethical red flags. Truth is, the vast majority of jurisdictions allow flat fee billing, but at the same time, they also impose caveats…
Read MoreRound-Up of State Legal Ethics Rules on Flat Fees for Lawyers
Flat fees make life easy for clients. No lengthy bills to review, no sticker shock about the ultimate cost. Just one price for getting the job done. But if flat fees are so easy, why aren’t the ethics rules that govern them? In Part I of this post I tried to simplify the principles governing…
Read MoreIf You Must Hire An Unpaid Intern, Here’s a Contract for That
For many law students, the summer of 2021 has proved challenging. With the pandemic grip still tight back in the fall of 2020, many firms cut back or cancelled summer programs entirely to avoid another awkward summer of remote work. Meanwhile, as placement offices failed to get their act together when law schools opened virtually,…
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