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Setting and Collecting Fees

The $75/hour law firm

November 9, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

No, not joking.  Just a few days after my  two part series on the viability of a $99/hour firm, I came across this $75/hour business model, the Justice Cafe in Fulton County Georgia, offering a la carte family law service to walk in clients.  Lawyers staffing the Justice Cafe will work on contract and collect [...]

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How Low Can (or Should) You Go: Part II

November 2, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Following yesterday’s post exploring the viability of the $99/hour lawyer as a business model, discussion (if you can call an exchange of 140 character blurbs and bursts real discussion) ensued on Twitter. I wanted to use this post to summarize my view of the argument and also clarify the context of my post. Defending People [...]

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Billing Like It’s 1989: The $99/Hour Lawyer

November 1, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Call it a new kind of legal limbo as law firms take a turn on the conga line to see just how low they can go.  Only this form of limbo isn’t a game, but serious business.  Large firms are quoting suicide rates to keep business reports Lawyerist while solos and nonlawyer networks are exploring [...]

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Is Price Transparency Always A Good Thing for Prospective Clients?

October 15, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

As Matt Homann points out, price transparency is coming soon already here in both the medical and legal profession.  Of course, it goes without saying that most lawyers dislike the idea of putting price on their website either for fear that competitors will undercut them or concern that clients will be deterred by a high [...]

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Understanding the Value of Value Pricing, Courtesy of The New England Lobster Glut

August 9, 2012 by Carolyn Elefant

Talk about value-pricing makes me crabby.  It’s not that I’m a fan of the billable hour or that I fear that flat fees (one type of alternative pricing) put lawyers at risk of under-recovery.  Rather, it’s just that many of the alternative/value-pricing gurus are so darn opaque about how to implement alternative pricing that the [...]

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Your Realization Rates May Make You Realize That Flat Fees Often Make More “Cents”

November 7, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

As a solo or small firm lawyer, you’ve probably heard the term “involuntary pro bono.” That’s what happens when you sign up to take a case, collect a retainer, exceed the retainer and the client stops paying the bill on the eve of trial when it’s too late to pull out. Well, turns out that [...]

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Pay for the Product, Legal Service is Free or Pay for the Legal Service, Product is Free?

October 19, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

In my last post, I discussed different types of freebies that lawyers offer as incentives to encourage existing clients to send or refer more work. But lawyers — and quasi-legal providers like Legal Zoom — are also using free to generate new clients. Many lawyers – from solos to behemoth firms – are giving away [...]

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Two Different Business Models of Free – Frequent Buyer Benefits

October 19, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

As I mentioned in Marketing by the Numbers video, it’s 11 times more expensive to generate new clients than to attract business from existing clients. Existing or former clients already know you, so you don’t have to convince them to hire you. At the same time, because your clients are constantly inundated with marketing materials [...]

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Solo Snags A Client from Biglaw Firm Willing to Work for Free

October 13, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

It’s always inspiring to learn about a  solo who snags a plum client in a well-publicized case.   But the accomplishment is even sweeter when the solo beats out a major law firm that – get this – was willing to work for free. Though this kind of scenario doesn’t occur as frequently as many [...]

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An Attorney Listing Site to Avoid If You Want To Avoid Ethics Problems

September 22, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Sometimes, a new concept emerges that’s never been done before because no one ever thought of it. That’s called innovation. But other times, there’s reason that the new concept hasn’t been done before: because it’s a downright stupid idea. Unfortunately, many lawyers can’t tell the difference between innovation and idiocy, which is the only explanation [...]

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