More On Fee Setting from Legal Ease Blog

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 Michelle Golden at Golden Practices who writes that Shields’ approach enables clients to count on a fairly well defined price, phase by phase.

Is preparing a fee estimate a radical idea?  Is it true that most lawyers don’t evaluate a case in advance or give client estimates?  I’ve been giving clients estimates for thirteen years in my own practice, primarily because I learned it from the lawyers at my former firm.  If this technique is new to lawyers, than I’ve learned something from Shields and Golden that I’d rather not know.