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Setting and Collecting Fees

Some Real Numbers for How Much Should A Solo Lawyer Charge

July 25, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

You’ve heard all of the advice on setting rates for your services before. Stuff like, Pricing is an art, not a science. Don’t charge less than every other lawyer in town. Price your knowledge, not your time. All great advice, if you only had benchmarks. But where to find them? You can ask what others [...]

Read more Setting and Collecting Fees 10 comments

To Refer For A Fee or Refrain? That Is the Question For Solo Lawyers

June 1, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Should solo and small firm lawyers refer cases for a fee…or refrain?  It’s question largely unique to solos.  After all, when lawyers at a firm bring in business that is assigned to or handled by others, they typically receive an origination fee and may continue to collect a percentage of revenue subsequently generated by that [...]

Read more Retainer Agreements 4 comments

Some Open Questions for Flat Fee Aficionados and Ethics Gurus

May 9, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

Over the past few years, I’ve transitioned my practice from the billable hour to flat fees. For me, the flat fee works because most of the matters that I handle are, if not entirely predictable, then easily divided into discrete segments, each of which can each be assigned a set price. Though I can’t tell [...]

Read more Questions & Advice 13 comments

Making Your Clients’ Cases Pay for Themselves

April 22, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

So here’s a hypothetical for you. Sympathetic client with an interesting and compelling case seeks to retain you. The client can pay something, but most likely not enough to see the case through. What do you do? (a) Send the client packing; (b) Take the case and treat it as pro bono or (c) Find [...]

Read more Litigation & Courts: Policy and Practice 1 comment

Solos Can Provide Cover to DLA Piper Clients Who Can’t Pay Its $200k Cover

February 8, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant

So, last week’s big blogosphere news was that the DLAPiper, the world’s largest law firm has announced a mandatory minimum $200,000 annual cover charge for clients. New clients unwilling to commit to spending $200,000 annually on fees won’t be served, while existing clients who don’t meet the minimum billings requirement may be asked to leave. [...]

Read more Big Law/Small Law 2 comments

Take Credit Card Payments With Your Phone

October 25, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Last week, my Social Media for Lawyers co-author Niki Black and I discovered Square, a neat app that essentially converts an iphone or other smart phone into a cash register, allowing users to accept credit card payments, and email receipts for both cash and credit card transactions. The app can be linked to a user’s [...]

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The Retainer Letter As a Walk Down Memory Lane

October 22, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

I may not be a contract aficionado like Ken Adams, but I love a good retainer agreement.  Though  clean, crisp language and brevity makes me swoon as much as any other lawyer, my affinity for retainer agreements reaches far deeper than the surface:  quite simply, I’m a sucker for the stories behind the the whereas [...]

Read more Client Relations 0 comments

Billing Methodologies Don’t Act Unethically. Lawyers Do.

October 5, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Look,  I’m no friend of the billable hour.   As others have emphasized far more eloquently, the billable hour measures time, not results and as such, breeds inefficiency.  Worst, for at least two decades, the billable hour fed biglaw’s associate leverage schemes which have since buckled under the weight of bloated fees and left countless young [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 1 comment

Why I Won’t Let My Clients Set My Fees: It’s Not Their Job to Do My Work

August 20, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at Slaw.ca, one of my very favorite bloggers, Jordan Furlong, offers up a couple of innovative alternative billing ideas, including a recent and somewhat controversial initiative of 300 lawyer, UK-based CMS Cameron McKenna: letting clients decide what to pay. Though many might assume that if left to their own devices, clients would pay their [...]

Read more Client Service 1 comment

Why Biglaw Billing Is Like Brown M&M’s

July 1, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant

In the context of $201 million in legal fees,  a superfluous $1600 charge — for a fancy dinner and reading a newspaper article — is chump change, something that wouldn’t have registered a blip on the client’s radar screen but for this New York Post article.  Yet while the monetary value of the $1600 charge [...]

Read more Biglaw Practice and Issues 3 comments

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