Law Firm Billing

If you read my post on "How Hourly Billing Kills Law Firms," maybe you’ve been inspired to figure out how to price certain legal services based on their value to a client, not the number of hours you spent. Now all you have to do is figure out ...

Lawyers have been talking about and wrestling with “alternative billing methods” or "alternative fee agreements" for a decade or more. Recently, however, the conversation has shifted to “value billing.” Well, that’s a concept we can get ...

It would be great if collecting accounts receivable from clients just happened, like clockwork, once you sent off the bill. As you've likely discovered, however, the money doesn't come rolling in automatically. Technology tools can help, of ...

Every business has to generate cash to survive, whether you run a Fortune 500 company or a shaved ice stand—or a law practice. Most businesses pay expenses well in advance of delivering services and then invoicing the client. Accounting for the ...

In part one of this series on how to use project management software to manage people, Brett Owens started simple with some easy-to-use, off-the-shelf apps—Workflowy and Basecamp. In part two, Brett shows us how delegation and collaboration ...

You're a new lawyer, launching a new law firm. How do you decide what your hourly rate will be? The ethics rules say that your rate must be "reasonable." That doesn’t give you much to go on. You know your rate should be a fair price for the ...

So many say “just do it” when discussing "new normal" pricing strategies in the legal market. The thinking is that you should just pick a number that meets a client’s value proposition and go with it. While the simplicity of this is compelling, ...

When I started my own commercial litigation boutique last year, I gave serious thought to abandoning the much-maligned billable hour. After all, we all know the criticisms: The billable hour rewards inefficiency, places the lawyer’s interests at ...

Thoughtful planning will be the key to making flat-fee billing, or any other billing method, viable and successful. And no matter how you change your billing practices, timekeeping will play a critical role. Yes, clients can perceive the value ...

Financial success is not measured by the billable hours you work, but by the amount of cash you actually realize from them. Uncollected receivables are tantamount to an interest-free loan to the client that can eat up your cash flow and ...