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January 10, 2008
Value price this. Part V.
There's more commentary--to your right and below--including Allison Shields', and her fine post "Even More Talk About Pricing". WAC?'s continuing take: billing by the hour for our firm--which depends on repeat business from publicly-traded clients we have represented in many cases for decades--is not a broken system for us. When it breaks, or if the markets change, we'll fix it. In the meantime, we know lots of ethical, forward-thinking, ultra-competent lawyers who provide value for GCs the "old way". And let us change the subject. If you want to improve things, work to: (1)eliminate contingent fee agreements (the greatest anti-client device ever), (2) replace the popular election of state judges (an embarrassing, medieval travesty) with a merit-based selection system, and (3) make the lawyers and all staff in your shop profoundly and religiously client-focused. Further, please oh please work (4) to take the emphasis off "lawyer comforts" like (a) "professionalism"; it encourages lawyer clubbiness and compromises clients by, for examples, taking emphasis off procedural rules when you really need them, and turning local litigation counsels into wimps who won't go to bat for clients. And (b) "work-life balance". Yeah, practicing law is hard.
Posted by JD Hull at January 10, 2008 11:17 PM