This practical book details the economic and client service advantages of alternative law firm billing methods, the various billing methods currently available and how to select and implement the right alernative billing method for law firms of all sizes.
Review/Endorsement by David H. Sump in The Newsletter of The Virginia Bar Association on June, 2005:
"Many of you, like me, practice in firms that operate predominantly on the billable hour system. We feel like hamsters on a hamster wheel, running feverishly to bill sufficient hours to pay the rent every month. We dream of a future when our young associates will work in a system where legal services are compensated on value delivered to the client rather than time spent to achieve the result.
But the billable hour dies hard, like a cockroach that refuses to check into its own special motel or a rodent that scoffs at the spring-loaded cheese morsel. The billable hour is an institution that resists the revolution to alternative billing systems. I must confess that as much as I detest the billable hour, I know that if we bill enough of them each month, there will be money left over at the end of the month to pay my partners.
It is in the face of this reality that the ABA publishes yet another work aimed at helping the legal profession to kick the hourly billing habit. In Winning Alternatives to the Billable Hour - Strategies That Work (ABA Press, 2nd Ed. 2002), editors James A. Calloway and Mark A. Robertson collect a very persuasive assortment of case valuation and billing systems that ignore the billable hour. This book is especially helpful because it addresses the needs and concerns of all attorneys, from solo to large firm practitioner.
Winning Strategies supersedes its predecessors by addressing the previous concerns expressed challenging the use of alternative billing systems and providing good, solid solutions. The book not only forces us to re-evaluate how we value cases, (or more importantly how our clients value our services), but also how we can use these valuation techniques to establish a billing system that reduces risk for both the firm and the client.
I highly recommend this book as the best in the ABA series of publications offering alternatives to the billable hour. You will find especially helpful the many exhibits providing sample engagement letters and fee agreements for several of the alternatives found in the text. A hand floppy disk containing these exhibits is also provided with the book. At the VBA Law Practice Management Division price of $119.95, this book is worth the investment!
David H. Sump is the Managing Partner for the firm of Crenshaw, Ware & Martin, PLC, in Norfolk. He practices in the area of maritime litigation and contract litigation.
