Reblog: “Alternate Billing: Fad, Fancy, or the Future of the Law?”

From a client’s perspective, unchecked hourly billing should be avoided at all costs – unless you have no problem being taken to the cleaners.  Smart clients need to be examining value-based billing and/or alternative fee arrangements.  @NikiBlack has written a great post on the potentially opposing dynamics between what clients want or should want (value-priced billing) versus the status quo of open-ended hourly billing.

The smartest clients will want to follow the approach I’ve discussed earlier (with many thanks to Richard Burcher), which balances the needs of the client (get the most value at the best price) with the needs of their attorney to make a fair profit on any given matter(s).  Only when both of these usually opposing needs are met, will the attorney-client relationship be maximized, i.e., the attorney providing the optimal level of legal services that are best-aligned with the client’s interests.