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Setting and Collecting Fees

What Do You Do If Your Clients Want to Lead A Revolution? Join Them, Of Course!

February 1, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Over at my Legal Blogwatch beat, I wrote about Cisco GC Mark Chandler’s speech taking big law firms to task for their “guild” mentality and lack of responsiveness to clients.  You ought to read the whole post, which excerpts the speech, but Chandler argues that companies like his are concerned about legal costs, want fixed [...]

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What Solos Earn

January 29, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

I came across this Salary Chart for Solo Practitioners, updated as of January 21, 2007.  I can’t say that it’s all that scientific, since it sampled 244 respondents.  But for what it is worth, according to the chart, median salary for a solo 1-4 years out is $50k, 5-9 years, $80k, 10-19 years – 82k [...]

Read more Setting and Collecting Fees 14 comments

Sometimes Price Matters – And So What If It Does?

January 12, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Believe me, as a solo who competes frequently with large firms for clients, I’d love, love, love to buy the arguments made by my blogging colleagues, Chuck Newton and Tom Collins that small firms don’t need to, and shouldn’t have to compete on price (Chuck’s post is here, Tom’s post is here).  And perhaps that’s [...]

Read more Marketing & Making Money 8 comments

Bill Less and Prosper!

December 9, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Yeah, yeah, I know – it’s not about price, it’s about value; talk about price and you’ll forever be haggling over cost with your clients.  I buy all of that…and yet, sometimes, clients do measure value in terms of price.  Let’s be honest – aren’t there matters where clients would hire a 700 person law [...]

Read more Big Law/Small Law 2 comments

When You Value Bill, Be Sure To Tell The Client

November 12, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Plenty’s been written about the evils of the billable hour; how the billable system measures time rather than value and in so doing contributes to inefficiencies and bill padding.   But criticism of value billing is harder to come by, and with the exception of David Giacalone’s writings, you don’t find much negative commentary about value [...]

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More On Fee Setting from Legal Ease Blog

November 5, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Allison Shields of Legal Ease has started a series on how to set fees, with these two posts here and here.  Shields spends a good deal of time describing how lawyers examine a case up front in detail, so that you can figure out how to assign a fee.  And her advice garners compliments from [...]

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Make More With Flat Fees

October 25, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Here’s a story from CNNMoney.com/Fortune Small Business (10/25/06) on how one Portland, Oregon law firm, Ambrose Law Group bolstered its revenues by a whopping 85 percent, after participating in Fortune Small Business’ Money Makeover Program and converting from the billable hour to flat fee arrangements.  From the article: “Flat-fee billing is better for clients and [...]

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Oh, If We Could Get Clients to Pay To Do Their Own Work

October 25, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

One of the legacies of the first conference that I attended over a year ago is that I’m still reading other women’s blogs that I’d have never encountered but for the conference.  And it’s through one of those blogs that I learned about a franchise called Dinner My Way where you pay to cook your [...]

Read more Business Models 6 comments

Lawyers: Do You Eat Your Own Dogfood?

October 17, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

My husband recently started a new position at a technology company that, like many others, eats its own dogfood, i.e., it uses the product that it makes.  For lawyers, our dogfood is our advice to our clients.  But how many lawyers “eat own dogfood” when we draft retainer agreements for our clients? This article, NY [...]

Read more Dealing With Clients 2 comments

What Makes A Fee Unreasonable?

August 28, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Many lawyers (with this notable exception) believe that the 1/3 contingency fee is reasonable and that any fee agreed to between a willing client and an attorney is also reasonable.  But in this recent story, Attorney’s 9/11 Fee Called “Shocking, Unconscionable” (law.com 8/28/06), lawyer Tom Troiano had a valid retainer agreement that provided for 1/3 [...]

Read more Ethics & Malpractice Issues 11 comments

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