How to Increase Your Law Practice Cash Flow by Helping Your Clients Choose Their Own Fees by Alexis Neely
One of the biggest reasons most lawyers struggle with the business end of law practice is because of the old, outdated practice of billing time on an hourly basis, often in six-minute increments. Clients hate it and so do lawyers. When I was working for a large law firm, there was really no choice but to bill time. The managing partners had no way to track effectiveness of associates without it. And, frankly, it’s one of the reasons I left to start my own law practice. As a corporate tax and estate planning associate, billing time just didn’t seem to work well. Clients weren’t communicating with us as often as they should because they knew they’d get a bill in the mail weeks later for the $67.50 email they sent and I would more often than not choose not to bill time for work performed because, honestly, I felt bad doing it when I was answering a quick question for a nonprofit or personal client. When I hung my own shingle and started my law practice, I knew that I’d have to make the switch from hourly billing to something else, but I wasn’t sure how to do it or what the something else would be. I found myself losing money because I wasn’t billing for the quick calls, the requests for referrals to other lawyers and the myriad of other little things that would come up that felt like billing would take more time and cost more than just writing off the time. I was losing money, fast. And I could see it wasn’t sustainable. So I made the shift to billing for my estate and business planning services on a flat fee basis. I looked at what other lawyers were doing based on their listserve posts and discussions and created my own flat fees. But there was a problem...clients weren’t signing up as
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Attorney Journals Orange County | Volume 193, 2022
often as I felt they should and I knew it all had to do with the fees. I wasn’t explaining them properly. I almost considered switching back to the hourly model, which all clients could understand and, it seemed, almost expected. Then, I engaged a client for a $5,500 trust package. Success! Except then it wasn’t... Within two weeks they had called me back to cancel the planning. They had found another lawyer who would provide EXACTLY what I was providing for just $2,500. And while they said they would be happy to pay me $1,000 more for the additional service and relationship I provided, they couldn’t justify more than double. I was devastated. I knew I was offering more than the lawyer who was charging just $2,500 for EXACTLY the same thing, but I didn’t know how to articulate that more. So I let them out of our agreement. As I did so, I made a request. I said to the client, “Okay, I understand what you are saying and I have a request. Would you please get back in touch with me after the planning with this other lawyer and share your experience with me?” He said yes and, frankly, I never expected to hear from him again. But hear from him I did. And it was better than I could have ever hoped for. In fact, what he shared with me became the basis for a complete redesign of the way I charged for my legal services, explained them to clients and was most likely the #1 single thing most responsible for my being able to go on to build a million-dollar-a-year-plus law practice. This client came back to me with a point-by-point
