Stop Billing Clients by the Hour in Employment Cases
Jay Sheppard at the Client Revolution blog, just posted an interesting piece on hourly billing. He says that clients hire lawyers to manage or reduce risk. But, he says that when lawyers bill their clients by the hour, the lawyers actually create risk for their own clients with unpredictable bills.
I have to admit that at our law firm, we have charged many clients by the hour. But Jay Sheppard is right, hourly billing pits the lawyer and the client against each other. We have slowly eliminated hourly billing at our firm. We now use flat fees and contingency fee arrangements.
Recently, one of our clients said that one of the things he likes about our firm is our flat fees. He said he did not have to worry about managing the costs. In that case, we have a hybrid billing arrangement - part flat fee and part contingency fee. Under this approach, our interests are aligned with our clients. It works much better than hourly billing.
