Legal Commentary

Jim Hassett Takes A Detour--But It's Worth It

By Patrick J. Lamb

Earlier, I wrote about Part I of Jim Hassett's 5-part series on alternative fees.  Jim has already written the entire series (if you want it in full format, it's available here).  But showing great agility, Jim has adapted Part II on his blog posts to incorporate some dialogue created by Part I.  Jim shares some email exchanges with Ron Baker of VeraSage Institute, which are most interesting.  The issue Jim captures is how soon alternative fees arrive as a meaningful replacement of the billable hour.

Having spent some time in discussions with Ron, I know him to be a proponent of value billing--that is, figuring out what the value of a particular matter is and having that value become the fee.  At our very first meeting, I asked Ron how that would work in the litigation context and I never quite heard an answer that made sense to me.  From my standpoint, it is a mistake to let the idea of "value billing" hijack the movement to alternative fees.  In a perfect world, a value fee and an alternative fee should be one and the same.  In the real world, an alternative fee is simply one that aligns the economic interests of lawyer and client.  After that, the bells and whistles added can (and should) result in cost savings and greater value to the client.

The discussion is worth a careful read.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).