Value Pricing v. Billable Hour. Scroll down. It’s not often that we get a total of 17 comments on any subject, it goes on for 5 days, and all of the comments are informed and sane. How do we ensure that clients–from GCs to small businesses and individuals of more limited means–get value? The last comment, from trial lawyer John Day, who arguably speaks for billable hour Tories*, old schoolers and other high-functioning dinosaurs like WAC?, is likely not the last word:
I had lunch with an assistant general counsel of a publicly traded company today and discussed this controversy. His thoughts: “We do value billing on every matter where we employ counsel. We pay them by the hour, but if we don’t think we get fair value for what we paid, we don’t use that lawyer again.”
Next?
*WAC? is part Irish (and yet generally factual). “Tories”, interestingly, was first used to describe rural bandits in Ireland. And then, of course, it changed.