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SFL Friday -- Turtlenecks and Calvados Edition!

Hi kids, well it's almost that time, I'm starting to get a little antsy to start the weekend, how about you?

A few items I wanted to highlight before I go -- overthinking your putt will screw you up, there is apparently some kind of sporting event this weekend, and good 'ole Normie Kent, who has been fighting the good fight for as long as I can remember, has a new blog.

Note to JT -- time for a new bookmark! (Please, no chronics....)

And this one made me chuckle:

Evan Chesler thinks the billable hour is outmoded:

?This is the time to get rid of the billable hour,? said Evan R. Chesler, presiding partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York, one of a number of large firms whose most senior lawyers bill more than $800 an hour.

?Clients are concerned about the budgets, more so than perhaps a year or two ago,? he added, with a lawyer?s gift for understatement.

Evan, you have always been both a tremendous lawyer and insufferable gasbag -- and I say that affectionately.

But seriously, you're just now starting to pick up on this?

Mr. Chesler, who is an advocate of the new billing practices, said that instead of paying for hours worked, more clients are paying Cravath flat fees for handling transactions and success fees for positive outcomes, as well as payments for meeting other benchmarks. He said that such arrangements were still a relatively small part of his firm?s total business, but declined to discuss billable rates and prices in detail.

Wow -- you mean alternative billing arrangements exist? Are they really real Daddy? I think the key for some is probably to ensure that whatever arrangement exists, you make about as much from the client as you could have under the traditional arrangement.

Or maybe I'm being cynical:

?I like to paraphrase Churchill,? Mr. Krebs said. ?In all these conversations, never has so little been accomplished by so many for so long. It just hasn?t happened.?

Not at Cravath, anyways.

Finally, with temperatures dropping to the arctic 40s this weekend, it'll be a nice time to cozy up with your favorite someone, break out the snifter and calvados, and find a nice, mutually satisfactory way to stay warm.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on January 30, 2009 (boomark / email).