Dissecting an email on alternative fees: Firm Has A Long Road Ahead
Someone sent me an email yesterday passing along a blast email she had received from a listserv:
Our firm’s clients are regularly pressuring us to enter into alternative fee arrangements. It is quite an undertaking to consider a model for this approach, and I am wondering whether anyone has already begun the process. We already have some matters (transactional work) in which we bill a flat fee. Can anyone tell me if they have experience with an alternative fee arrangement for litigation work? Thanks.
What can we learn by dissecting this email. In no particular order:
1) The pressure is from the firm's clients.
2) The pressure is regular.
3) The firm has accurately determined that it needs a different model for this fee structure (though I am not sure they are using model in the business model sense)
4) The firm has underestimated what it takes to change to the new model ("quite an undertaking" does not begin to suggest how radical and institutionally transforming the changes will be)
5) The firm has not heard of Valorem, Bartlit Beck, Shepard Law Group or the others that do litigation on a fixed fee or alternative fee basis (or else they would have called those firms directly).
6) The firm is now behind the curve.
The most important of these six points? Numbers 1 and 2.
