Category: Legal Fees

Categories
Legal Fees

Estimates or Guesstimates?

Desks with computers and phones at a call centre.

Every time I phone a call centre for just about any company, it turns out that they are experiencing a higher volume of calls than anticipated, and although my call is important to them, they must keep me on hold for a very long time.  It really makes you wonder why, after all of this time, they have not yet started anticipating a higher volume of calls and hiring more staff. Especially since my call is so important to them. I know that something does not quite add up, even if I have not zeroed in on the exact problem. I suspect that it has something to do with them lying to me and my call not actually being all that important to them.

Read more about how bad lawyers are at estimating fees “Estimates or Guesstimates?”
Categories
Legal Fees

Live and Die by the Immoral Sword

When I completed my Articles long ago, I was not hired back.  It was a time of economic recession and jobs were difficult to come by.  I sent out many application letters and eventually accepted an offer at a small suburban firm.  The day after I accepted the job, I received a phone call from one of Canada’s largest law firms offering me an interview.  I politely declined and said that I had already accepted a position.  A family member who will go unnamed thought that I was crazy, but I had given my word and I was not going to break it.

read more about collecting your bills in our business culture “Live and Die by the Immoral Sword”
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Legal Fees

Putting In Time

Building with clock tower in Peru

Back when I started practicing law, I used to record my time on a docket sheet stapled to the inside front cover of each file.  When it came time to bill the file, all of the information that I needed was there for me to use, but I was the only one who had it.  Firm management did not have it.  They could not tell me that my docketed time for the month was too low, or that I had recorded less time than last month or how my work in process compared to the same month of the year before.  They could not easily compare my docketed time to what I had billed and tell me that my write-offs were too high, and they certainly could not look at my work in process and easily tell me how I was doing compared to other associates.

read more about the pressure on lawyers to bill their recorded time “Putting In Time”
Categories
Legal Fees

Beware of Lawyer Math

The computers used to launch the first manned space flights at Cape Canaveral

Lawyers typically bill in 6-minute intervals (one-tenth of an hour). So, a lawyer with a $500.00 hourly rate bills $50.00 for 6 minutes of work.

Say a lawyer billing $500.00 per hour spends 6 minutes for a client on one day, consisting of four tasks, being a two-minute phone call, one minute reading an email, one minute leaving a voicemail message, and 2 minutes drafting a quick letter.  Six minutes. One-tenth of an hour. At $500.00 per hour, that’s $50.00. Right?  

Maybe. 

read more about lawyers’ creative math “Beware of Lawyer Math”