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Death of the billable hour, part n+1

By Nancy Rapoport

In this morning's NYT, Lisa Belkin's article, Who's Cuddly Now? Law Firms, caught my eye. As I've predicted (see here for an example), law firms are starting to move away from billable hours to more client-friendly, lawyer-friendly forms of fees. She points out that clients "reacting to spiraling legal costs, have begun insisting on flat-fee deals." She also notes that the newest generation of lawyers wants a more balanced life.

This is, to quote every parody of Martha Stewart ever done, a Good Thing: billable hours tempt fraudulent behavior (a one-minute phone call as a 15-minute increment of a fee?), punish the efficient lawyer, and grind inexorably on the quality of life of lawyers who do want to take time to do their jobs well. With alternative methods of billing, big-firm lawyers can concentrate on the professional side of their lives, in much the same way that their smaller-firm and contingency fee colleagues have been doing for decades.

By the way, thanks to Gil Grantmore for fixing the formatting of this post.

Full post as published by Nancy Rapoport's Blogspot on January 24, 2008 (boomark / email).