Category: Legal Fees

Categories
Legal Fees

If You Love Me,  if you Ever Loved Me:  Pay Me Faster

A couple holding hands on the beach with the sun setting behind them.

I pay my bills quickly. It is my way of telling the people with whom I deal that I value their services. I want my suppliers to remember that I am the guy who pays them the same day that I receive their invoice. I figure that there will be days in January when the furnace stops furnacing, or in July when the air conditioner stops conditioning. When something like that happens and they can only get to one more customer that day, maybe they will choose me over that other guy who only pays them after the third follow-up call. (Of course, this general principle does not apply to people like Bell Canada or Rogers who I pay on time, but not early, because they don’t value me, so I don’t value them. If Air Canada did not demand the ticket price in advance, I would never ever pay them.)

read more about paying your bills faster “If You Love Me,  if you Ever Loved Me:  Pay Me Faster”
Categories
Legal Fees

Pro Bonzo

Monkey
Photo by Arindam at Pexels.

A brave articling student once quipped about me that, “if you say, ‘pro bono’ near Murray, you’d better be talking about Sonny and Cher.”  Now that was a tad unfair. It was not that I was against our firm doing pro bono work, but I did want us to be doing it for people who could not afford a lawyer, as opposed to people who were just cheap and did not value what we did.

read more about why lawyers should not give free consultations “Pro Bonzo”
Categories
Legal Fees

Sometimes, I Just Don’t Care About The Client’s Damn Budget

Hands of a person holding cash while sitting at a desk with a calculator, computer and papers.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko at Pexels.

A young lawyer named Eve called me today about a fee dispute. She had quoted an hourly rate without providing an estimate and had issued an interim bill for the time that she spent. The client did not think that it should have cost that much but was willing to pay it. However, the client wanted the rest of the work done within her budget.

read more about whether you should care about the client’s budget “Sometimes, I Just Don’t Care About The Client’s Damn Budget”
Categories
Legal Fees

A Masterclass on Quoting Fees For Lawyers Who Bill by the Hour

A professor in front of a large class.
Photo by ICSA at Pexels.

“Estimating is what you do when you don’t know.”

~ Sherman Kent

A young lawyer named Eve called me today. She had made the same mistake that I made numerous times in my first few years of practice. She had quoted an hourly rate for reviewing and reporting on a draft agreement without providing an estimate, and then issued a bill for her time.

The client said that the bill was too high. Never in his wildest imagination had he contemplated that the job would take that much time. He did not want to pay.

read more about how to provide estimates for legal fees “A Masterclass on Quoting Fees For Lawyers Who Bill by the Hour”
Categories
Legal Fees

My Journey To the Land of Setting Expectations

Pile of Euros coins.
Photo by Panos and Marenia Stavrinos from Pexels

Back in the good old days, I used to bill by the hour, just like every other lawyer. I had a simple retainer agreement with my clients which essentially provided that they agreed to pay my hourly rate for all of the hours that I spent on their matters.

When the work was done, I would send my bill to the client calculated by multiplying the time spent by my hourly rate. Then my client would pay the bill. Life was simple.

read more about communicating about Fees “My Journey To the Land of Setting Expectations”
Categories
Legal Fees

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

A collage of photos of the same woman with many different expressions.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels.

I once proposed raising our hourly rates and was met with furious resistance by the head of our litigation department who assured me that no assessment officer would ever permit lawyers to charge the amounts that I had proposed. He was a brilliant litigator and he was completely correct. However, he was not much of a businessperson and had not considered how rarely our accounts were assessed. I was more than willing to lose all of the assessments and rake in the extra dollars on more than 99% of our files.

read more about how hourly billing rates are set “Stupid, Stupid, Stupid”
Categories
Legal Fees

In Defense of the Billable Hour

Woman holding a clock.
Photo by Victoria Rain at Pexels.

The other day I heard a story about a furniture store in Toronto that was known to cater to the wealthy. The owner purchased an unusual item in Vietnam for twenty dollars. He brought it back to his store and promoted it as a one-of-a-kind item from an exotic destination. He sold it to someone with more money than brains for $10,000. The person who told me the story swears that she has fifth-hand knowledge of the incident and that it is absolutely true. Having shopped in that store once, I do not doubt it.

Welcome to the concept of value billing. Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.

read more about why fixed fees wiill not save the legal world “In Defense of the Billable Hour”
Categories
Legal Fees

Silent Stupidity

An older man holding a finger up to his lips to make the silence gesture.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels.

“Fools believe silence is a void needing to be filled; the wise understand there’s no such thing as silence.”

Michael J. Sullivan, Age of Myth

Client: Why do I want to pay for two lawyers to be in this meeting?

read more about how lawyers anwer that question “Silent Stupidity”
Categories
Legal Fees

The Client’s Damn Legal Budget

Woman working with calculator and computer, with dollar bills on her desk.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko at pexels.

Sometimes clients call lawyers and announce what their legal budget is for a proposed project. New lawyers sometimes struggle to handle the situation because the scope of the work is uncertain or the proposed budget is insufficient to do the job properly.

read more about dealing with clients who announce a legal budget “The Client’s Damn Legal Budget”
Categories
Legal Fees

Paperwork, Practitioners and Panties

Woman looking at two pieces of paper.
Photo by Mikhail Nilov at Pexels.

Some years ago I went off on a cruise and took the opportunity to have some renovations done at my house while I was away. George did a great job on the drywall, but when he sent me the invoice, he made one tiny little mistake. Instead of giving me the invoice for the construction work, he sent me an invoice for his “other business” which, unbeknownst  to me, was producing racy videos. He was quite embarrassed when I asked him what a “panty teaser” was and what it had to do with my ceiling. I never did find out whether my house was the setting for his cinematographic masterpiece.

read more about being smart about how you bill “Paperwork, Practitioners and Panties”