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Setting and Collecting Fees

Don’t Negotiate, Do Accommodate

October 18, 2008 by Carolyn Elefant

Last season, my daughters and I became fans of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice.  While my girls enjoyed  the show for the recognizable products that were often the subject of the challenge, I watched for marketing lessons.  And one of the lessons that’s remained with me now, even several months later, was gleaned from a competition [...]

Read more Client Relations 4 comments

Look Who’s Discounting Their Fees

May 30, 2008 by Carolyn Elefant

If you’ve ever discounted your fees, either voluntarily to lure a client to your firm or involuntarily because  your client ran out of cash, you’re in strong company.  As I posted over at Legal Blogwatch, 76 percent of law firms discount their fees.  But what’s even more interesting is that 89 percent of the discounters [...]

Read more Big Law/Small Law 2 comments

Real Life Marketing Lesson: Are You Charging Clients Like American Airlines?

May 21, 2008 by Carolyn Elefant

Not surprisingly, many American Airlines customers expressed significant outrage over the airline’s recently announced plans to charge passengers additional fees for checking bags and for certain services related to reservations. Indeed, the news may have irked you as well. But before you start venting, ask yourself whether your billing policies “nickel and dime” your clients [...]

Read more Client Service 8 comments

Do They Always Dance With the One Who Brought Them?

April 29, 2008 by Carolyn Elefant

Many small firms wonder whether they should offer free or low cost legal services to start-up companies or small businesses in the hopes that those companies will generate more lucrative business as they grow.  Sounds great in theory, in many cases, once those baby start-ups mature, they may dump you for a more established law [...]

Read more Dealing With Clients 0 comments

$42 Million Fee – Inherently Unreasonable? That Depends, But Here, It Was

November 30, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at Legal Blog Watch, I’ve posted my view on the $42 million fee collected by a law firm in a multi-million dollar estate matter. Basically, the lawyers originally had a fee agreement with the client; when she found her legal fees mounting (to the tune of $1 million per quarter), she asked her lawyers [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 1 comment

What Does A Sample Invoice Look Like?

November 26, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

I realize that these days, alternative billing is all the rage – and I too am a proponent of alternatives to the billable hour. Still, there are times when you have to resort to the billable hour, either at the insistence of a client, or under some of the guidelines for submitting a fee petition [...]

Read more Law Practice Management 0 comments

Billing Alternatives For Solos

November 2, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Here’s an article from the ABA Journal entitled Billing by the Slice, which offers some alternative billing ideas by and for solos. With “billing by the slice,” lawyers bill for a case in stages – a practice used by Ted Waggoner of Rochester Indiana. From the article, Waggoner describes that: he might tell a client [...]

Read more Business Models 0 comments

Walmart v. Neiman Marcus Pricing for Legal Services

June 29, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at my Legal Blog Watch Beat, I posted about the Walmart v. Nieman Marcus pricing dichotomy, initially described by Mike Sherman of Law for Profit. Now many of you have heard about this model before: basically, you have a choice between selling lots of legal services (volume practice) at a narrow profit margin or [...]

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How Not To Price

April 3, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at Legal Blogwatch, I posted about a case of outrageous billing by Debra Opri, attorney to Larry Birkhead, who claims to be father to Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter. Exhorbitant charges included thousand dollar dinners where Birkhead wasn’t present, substantial cell phone roaming charges and even expenses for personal laundry. The 112 page invoice totaled [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 0 comments

Another large firm lawyer goes solo – and it’s all about the [lower] rates

March 16, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

One of the unintended consquences of the expansion of large law firms is that this trend may drive more lawyers to start their own firms. Think about it – though large firms hope that increased size will foster economies of scale and result in savings, there’s still a whole lot of overhead involved in running [...]

Read more Biglaw to Solo 2 comments

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