Legal Commentary

Great Billable Hour Joke

By Patrick J. Lamb

Did you hear the one about the General Counsel who went shopping for hours? " I'll have a dozen of the $380 hours and half a dozen of the $500 hours.  The $250 hours are looking particularly good this morning, so I'll have twenty of those." 

Have you heard it? Neither have I, actually.  I confess, I just made it up.  Why did I do it?  To underscore a point that came to mind during a meeting I attended where I was able to listen to several in-house lawyers talk about their buying decisions.

Here's my request of in-house lawyers.  Make a list of the most important things you would want from your lawyer if price was not a factor.  I'm not suggesting these are your list, but some potential candidates for your list might be,  results, speed of obtaining result, how much of your time the lawyer consumed, how responsive they were, anticipating your needs, and so forth.  You get the idea.

Now add price to the mix.  But it's really the total price you're worried about, isn't it?  Now ask yourself this question:  How does the way I currently pay my lawyers create incentives to achieve the things I think are important?  (Be brutally honest with yourself--it's the only way to the truth.) And if the answer is (as it will be many of you) that your method of compensating your lawyers does not create incentives for the things you believe are important, ask whether there is pricing system that would. 

Now the last question:  why are you using that system?

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on July 30, 2008 (boomark / email).