I think you’ve hit it on the head — and I think clients are going to be looking for better ‘project management’ on all of their files in the future, regardless of the billing method used. Whether that will require new positions to be created within law firms or whether project management skills and training will be needed for the attorneys and partners themselves may depend on the firm and its clients.

Just curious – do you think your reaction to the ‘additions’ would be different if you were told up front that the specifics of what was and wasn’t included in the quoted fee, and what the likely or common ‘additions’ might be? Some customers might be annoyed that they were charged $xx for replacing the wipers, when they could have done that themselves for less.

The reason I recommend that the additions be explained and agreed to ahead of time is that sometimes those conversations lead to different options that could be explored and an opportunity to review the client’s most important goals. Sometimes the work HAS TO be done, but sometimes it doesn’t – and the client needs to be involved in that decisionmaking.

I must say though, the one thing I can’t stand is the call from the garage with the additional work, after all most of the time this needs to be done so I haven’t a choice. This “addition” leaves more of a bad taste for me than just an itemised this is what we did. Maybe personal preference though.

Some of the comments are for not necessarily a “fixed rate for all” but a rate where there is a set cost for a specific piece of work. I can perhaps see this and that the project management skills would be required. But this would require some very good budgeting process and I can only see this happening if there were a new role created in law firms, the legal case project manager.

Any more thoughts?

In your example of the auto repair, both customers were not charged the same fee precisely because, as you point out, the work that was performed for each of these customers was ultimately different. Although each came for 40,000 mile service, the first customer’s vehicle required additional service for replacement of various parts, etc.

In the legal context, the way that this would be handled would be by specifically defining the scope of the matter to be handled and then using change orders if additional work needed to be performed. Essentially, this is what the auto repair shop did when itemizing the bill for the first client to show them the additional services performed and the cost of those services (although I recommend that the client be advised of the additional services and the cost, and that the client’s agreement to incur those additional fees be received BEFORE the work is actually performed).

While I agree that the billable hour will last longer in large and medium sized firms, I think that’s more the result of entrenched thinking and lack of flexibility than it is the ability to provide clients with fixed fee alternatives that work for both the lawyer and the client.

Time is one of the costs to the lawyer in providing legal fees, and it needs to be taken into consideration when determining the price to be charged to a client for work to be performed. However, it shouldn’t be the sole determining factor in setting the price. Additional services performed provide additional value to the client, and the lawyer is certainly entitled to charge for those services, even under a fixed fee billing system.

Clients care about outcome, results and service. The number of hours the lawyer spends on their matter isn’t important unless the lawyer makes billable hours an issue, or if they don’t understand the value of the service that is being provided.

Most of the anti-billable hour is just generalized talk. When you get down to the details (as you did in your post) it’s a lot more difficult to implement fixed fees and other alternatives.

Many business owners don’t like the billable hour based model for two reasons: (1) difficult to estimate costs and (2) they don’t feel like they can just pick up the phone and chat – every move they make increases their bill.

Either way, great post, I agree, this topic gets a lot of lip service, it’s nice to see a dissenting voice on the other side and some thinking that doesn’t automatically assume that the billable hour is evil!