Other Lawfirms Ban Hourly Billing Model
Following up my posts (here, here, and here)over the past several weeks about using fixed fees instead of charging by the hour, I learned that a Boston firm has banned the billable hour. In fact, the Shepherd Law Group has gone so far as to tell its clients that if they insist on having attorneys who bill by the hour for their time, they should retain another law firm!
The firm's founding partner, Jay Shepherd, says "Hourly billing is wrong, and it's anti-client. There's a disincentive to be efficient since you get paid more if you take longer to finish a matter—even though the client wants it to be finished as fast and efficiently as possible." I agree with Mr. Shepherd, and I made many of those same points in my prior posts on this subject.
On his blog, Gruntled Employees, Mr. Shepherd proudly stated that "during 2007, Shepherd Law Group has billed exactly 0.0 hours." His post references several other articles that discuss the problems with the hourly billing model, and it is well worth a read. Also, the Boston Globe published an article last week which takes a close look at this same issue.
Source: "Boston Law Firm Bans Billable Hour" by Martha Neil, published in the ABA Journal Weekly Newsletter.
